Péter Hegyi awarded the Robert F. Pitts Lecture Award
Academia Europaea member receives one of the world’s most prestigious physiology awards#

Professor Péter Hegyi MAE, Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Academia Europaea Budapest Knowledge Hub, has been awarded the Robert F. Pitts Lecture Award at the World Congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS). This award, presented every four years since 1978, is considered one of the highest honours in the global physiology community.

Named after Robert F. Pitts, a pioneering American physiologist who elucidated the kidney’s role in acid–base balance, the lecture has previously been delivered by internationally renowned scientists, including Walter F. Boron (USA), author of the world’s leading physiology textbook, and Dennis Brown MAE (Harvard Medical School, USA), former Editor-in-Chief of Physiological Reviews.

In his lecture, Professor Hegyi summarised 25 years of research on the ion transport mechanisms of pancreatic ducts. His group was the first to demonstrate that pancreatic bicarbonate secretion is regulated not only by stimulatory but also by inhibitory mechanisms – a finding that reshaped understanding of pancreatic physiology and raised new questions regarding acute and chronic pancreatitis.

His team also established the central role of the CFTR protein in pancreatic inflammatory diseases and showed that CFTR modulators, currently used in cystic fibrosis, may also correct alcohol-induced folding and activity defects of the protein. “The next step is to test these findings in human clinical trials. If successful, this could represent the first truly specific therapy for pancreatitis,” Professor Hegyi emphasised.