After completing a clinical research fellowship in anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Lasagna joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 1954, where he established the first ever clinical pharmacology department. Lasagna taught medicine and pharmacology at Johns Hopkins until 1970, when he accepted the position as the first chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Rochester's, School of Medicine and Dentistry, which he held for the next decade (1970–1980). Early in his fourteen-year career at Rochester, Lasagna founded the Center for the Study of Drug Development, later called the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development.
After completing a clinical research fellowship in anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Lasagna became part of the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 1954, where he established the first-ever clinical pharmacology department. Lasagna taught medicine and pharmacology at Johns Hopkins until 1970, when he accepted the position as the inaugural chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Rochester's School of Medicine and Dentistry, which he held for a decade (1970–1980). Early in his fourteen-year career at Rochester, Lasagna founded the Center for the Study of Drug Development, later renamed the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development.