By Mathews Nthinya
The Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences (CSPS) has announced Emeritus Professor Isadore Kanfer as the 2023 recipient of the CSPS Lifetime Achievement Award in Toronto for his outstanding contributions over the length of his career. CSPS is a professional organisation that prides itself in pharmaceutical research excellence. It is active in its decision-making and effective policy-making process and has a wide range of opportunities that allows its participants to network with each other.
Professor Kanfer served as Dean of Pharmacy at Rhodes University from 1987-1989 and was subsequently appointed as Head and Dean from 1999-2007. Soon after completion of his PhD he established the Biopharmaceutics Research Institute (BRI) at Rhodes University which provided research and development services to the pharmaceutical industry at the dawn of the generic medicines era.
The research projects emanating from his initiative focused on bringing down the price of medicines and resulted in the market approval of numerous generic medicines making many pharmaceutical products more affordable and more accessible to the wider population. Whereas his initial research focused on oral dosage forms such as tablets, capsules and liquids he subsequently has been directing his research efforts to the development of methods to assess the safety and efficacy of dermatological products intended for local action in the skin, thereby maintaining his primary objective to make medicines more affordable and more accessible.
He has written and published over 200 research articles and scientific presentations, 26 book chapters and is the editor of six books and more recently he has been appointed as General Editor of Routledge Resources Online – Pharmaceutical Science and Technology formerly the Encyclopedia of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology.
Prof Kanfer is familiar with receiving much-deserved recognition for his work. He was elected as Fellow of the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa (FPS) in 1992 and made an Honorary Life Member of the SA Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1994. In 2010 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) with the citation as a distinguished contributor and acknowledged leader in the advancement of the pharmaceutical sciences and in 2013 he was elected as a Fellow of CSPS and cited “for superior contributions to pharmaceutical sciences”.
Prof Kanfer made it a point to stay current with his field's latest research and developments. Doing this helped him provide his students with the most up-to-date information. He has supervised numerous post-graduate and Post-Doctoral Fellows and one of his post-graduate students recently completed her studies for the MSc degree which she received with Distinction. He is currently a Professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto, Canada where he is supervising a post-doctoral Fellow and continuing his research. Professor Kanfer has collaborated with numerous international researchers in his field, which helped him to stay current with some of the latest developments in the pharmaceutical sciences and also assisted him in expanding his knowledge in the industry.
All of his research has been placed in trusted and reputable journals. That has also helped him achieve so much success as a publisher and also assisted in advancing his career to greater heights. Professor Kanfer's willingness to participate in globally-recognised societies and associations has been extremely beneficial and also resulted in significant research funding from the United Sates Food & Drug Administration (FDA).
The recognition that he had been given at the CSPS award ceremony was a true reflection and testament to his hard work and dedication to the pharmaceutical sciences.