DETROIT-Dr. Charles Schuster, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University's School of Medicine, will be honored by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) with the 2008 Peter B. Dews Lifetime Achievement Award in Behavioral Pharmacology on April 5, 2008. The award recognizes outstanding lifetime achievement in research, teaching and professional service in the field of behavioral pharmacology.

Dr. Schuster received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland where he became an assistant professor before moving to the University of Michigan, and later to the University of Chicago where he was director of the Drug Abuse Research Center. He was appointed director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse from 1985 to 1992, and was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1989. In 1995, he joined Wayne State University as director of the Substance Abuse Research Division in the Department of Psychiatry.

Early in his career, Schuster was a pacesetter in investigations that focused on morphine self-administration in rhesus monkeys that encouraged many subsequent investigators to take up this new technique to examine drug dependence from a behavioral pharmacology point of view. At the National Institute of Drug Abuse, he began efforts toward developing pharmacotherapies for drug abuse. At Wayne State, he started the university's Substance Abuse Clinic that features both strong patient pharmacotherapy programs for individuals with opioid dependence problems and epidemiological, pharmacological and behavioral research in several areas. He has mentored many developing researchers and some of the leading behavioral pharmacologists in the field, for which he has also been previously honored.

"Dr. Schuster is most deserving of this prestigious award from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics," said Dr. Joseph Dunbar, associate vice president for Research at Wayne State. "This achievement and the many others that he has received are reflective of the highest of academic achievements one can attain in their field. He is a true leader in his field," Dunbar added.

Dr. Schuster will be presented the Peter B. Dews Award on Saturday, April 5 at the ASPET Annual Meeting in San Diego, California.