The second Esteve Foundation Research Prize was awarded to the study Tolerance to respiratory actions of sufentanil: functional tolerance and route-dependent differential tolerance, published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics in 1989 (250:371-378). The jury considered that this was a fundamental contribution to the knowledge of the mechanisms of narcotic dependence. The elucidation of the exact nature of these mechanisms represented a major step in the design of strategies aimed at overcoming the problem of drug addiction.
