Louis Lasagna was appointed Dean of the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University in July of 1984. Prior to that, he was Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology from 1970-1980 and Professor of Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry until his move to Tufts. Before moving to Rochester, he spent sixteen years at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine where he started the first academic group devoted solely to clinical pharmacology. Dr. Lasagna received his MD from Columbia University in 1947, and received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Hahnemann Medical School and Rutgers University in 1983.In 1998, the University of Alcala in Spain awarded Dr. Lasagna an honorary doctoral degree.Dr. Lasagna has worked and written extensively in the areas of clinical trail methodology, analgesics, hypnotics, medical ethics, and the placebo effect. He serves on a number of editorial boards and has been a consultant to several of the National Institutes of Health as well as the Food and Drug Administration. He was a member of the Commission on the Federal Drug Approval Process that examined the drug development and approval process and reported its findings to Congress in April 1982.Dr. Lasagna has served on the General Accounting Office's Health Advisory Committee _ Human Research Division. He was Chairman of the National Committee to Review Current Procedures for Approval of New Drugs for Cancer and AIDS, which operated under the aegis of the President's Cancer Panel. In 1990, Dr. Lasagna was appointed to Secretary Sullivan's "Blue Ribbon Panel" which was commissioned to examine the Food and Drug Administration. In 1995, Dr. Lasagna served with three former FDA Commissioners on the so-called "Rogers Group" to prepare an agenda for legislative reform of the drug regulatory process, and in 1996 he testified before Congress on this topic. Two department Chairs in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics have been created to honor Dr. Lasagna, one at the University of Rochester and one at Tufts University.

(1995). Year Book of Drug Therapy, St. Louis: Mosby.(1993). Pharmaceutical Medicine (2d ed.). Burley, D.M.; Clarke, J.M.; and Lasagna, L. (Eds.) London: Edward Amold.