NEW ORLEANS - A Louisiana State University medical school professor will become president of a national organization for drug researchers.

  

LSU Health Sciences Center said Friday that Wayne Backes was voted president-elect of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. He will take that position July 1, and will become president a year later.

  

Backes is a professor of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics and associate dean for research at the LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine.

  

The association's website says elections were held Feb. 15. It says its 5,000 members conduct basic and clinical pharmacological research.