Jean Albert Boutin completed his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Nancy (France) in 1983 on Phase II drug metabolism enzymes and his postdoctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, MD) and Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden). He spent his scientific career as an employee of the French Pharma Laboratoires Servier from 1986 to 2019. He was the Director of the early drug discovery platform from 1998 to 2016 and then Director of Innovation. He is now associated with the Laboratory of Neuroendocrine Endocrine and Germinal Differentiation and Communication (NorDiC) at the University of Rouen, as counsel. He has 310 publications with 11114 citations and an h-index of 54 (Scopus, 6 November 2023). His main interests, besides melatonin, are N-myristoyltransferase and quinone reductase 2, as well as a series of peptide-based research programs aiming at both the assessment of new research tools and the discovery of new drug candidates, and an interest in the theoretical aspects of receptology.