Dr. Lasagna is Chairman of the Board and Adjunct Scholar at The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, Dean of the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, and Dean for Scientific Affairs at The Tufts University School of Medicine. He received his M.D. from Columbia University and honorary Sc.D. degrees from Hahnemann Medical School and Rutgers University. He also received an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Alcala in Spain.

Dr. Lasagna has worked and written extensively in the areas of clinical trial methodology, analgesics, hypnotics, medical ethics, and the placebo effect. He serves on a number of editorial boards and has been a consultant to several of the National Institutes of Health as well as the Food and Drug Administration. In 1990, Dr. Lasagna was appointed to Secretary Sullivan's "Blue Ribbon Panel" which was commissioned to examine the Food and Drug Administration. In 1995, Dr. Lasagna served with three former FDA Commissioners on the so-called "Rogers Group" to prepare an agenda for legislative reform of the drug regulatory process, and in 1996 he testified before Congress on this topic.

Two Chairs have been created to honor Dr. Lasagna, one in Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Rochester and the other in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Tufts University. Dr. Lasagna was awarded a PHRMA Foundation award in Clinical Pharmacology in 1970.