Cultivating Inner Strengths: Immunotherapy for Neurodegenerative Disease

Speakers

Dennis J. Selkoe, MD

Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's Hospital
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Dennis Selkoe is Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. His lab has made many essential contributions to understanding the molecular pathology of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, including identifying the protein tau in neurofibrillary tangles and the role of presenilin in the cleavage of amyloid precursor protein into Aβ. Selkoe is an author of the "amyloid hypothesis" that changes in the production and processing of amyloid-β are the initial step in a cascade of pathological changes that lead ultimately to neuronal dysfunction and cell death in AD—currently, the dominant paradigm in the understanding of this disease. Selkoe is also a founder of the company now known as Elan Pharmaceuticals.

Selkoe received his MD from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1969. After training at the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the NIH, he completed a neurology residency at Harvard Medical School and a postdoc in neuronal cell biology and neurochemistry at Harvard's Department of Neuroscience. In 1978 he founded a laboratory applying biochemical and cell biological techniques to the study of neurodegeneration. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Selkoe has won many awards for his research, including the Potamkin Prize, the Metropolitan Life Foundation Award, and the A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine.

Thomas Wisniewski, MD

New York University School of Medicine
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Thomas Wisniewski is professor of neurology, pathology, and psychiatry at the William & Sylvia Silberstein Institute for Aging and Dementia at the New York University School of Medicine. He directs the Neurodegenerative Conformational Disorders Laboratory, which probes the mechanisms behind the deposition of amyloid-β in Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. He is investigating the possibility of using highly immunogenic proteins as "vaccines" in immunotherapy that could result in the reduction or clearance of amyloid deposits in AD, and in other so-called conformational diseases such as the prion-related disorders.

Wisniewski completed his MD at King's College School of Medicine in the UK in 1982. He completed a residence in pathology at Downstate Medical Center in 1985 and another in neurology at NYU Medical Center in 1988, followed by a fellowship in clinical neuropathology and basic research at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. He joined NYU School of Medicine in 1990. Wisniewski's work has been recognized by the 2002 Alzheimer Award from the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Research.

Eliezer Masliah, MD

University of California at San Diego
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Eliezer Masliah is professor of neuroscience and pathology at the University of California San Diego and director of autopsy service at the University of California San Diego Medical Center. He heads the university's Experimental Neuropathology Laboratory, which probes the role of the abnormal accumulation of synaptic proteins, and searches for the cellular and molecular mechanisms of damage in neurodegenerative diseases. His work presently focuses on α-synuclein aggregation in both Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease. The lab has developed a mouse model suggesting that oxidative stress may promote these neurodegenerative diseases by promoting aggregation of α-synuclein, and is identifying and working with factors that inhibit this aggregation. Masliah's lab also studies the processes by which HIV may trigger neurodegeneration.

Masliah finished his MD at the National Autonomous University of Mexico City in 1983, followed by residencies in general pathology, oncologic pathology, and pediatric pathology at the national institutes in Mexico City. In 1988 he joined UCSD as a postdoctoral fellow in the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases, and was appointed an assistant research neuroscientist at the university in 1990 and an assistant professor in 1991. He was named professor in the departments of neurosciences and pathology in 1997 and director of autopsy services in 1995. Masliah's research awards include honorable mention from the American Association of Neuropathologists in 1989 and the Alzheimer Association George F. Berlinger Faculty Scholar Award in 1990.

Anne Messer, PhD

New York State Department of Health and School of Public Health, University of Albany, State University of New York
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Anne Messer is chief of mammalian genomics and director of the molecular genetics program at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health. She is also professor of biomedical sciences at the School of Public Health at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her neurogenetics laboratory is working on gene and antibody therapeutics for diseases that involve abnormal protein accumulation, including Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, and Parkinson's disease. Her work also involves basic research to identify gene therapy vectors for brain diseases.

Messer received a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Oregon followed by a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation fellowship at Harvard Medical School. She joined the Wadsworth Center in 1977, and has served as director of neurogenetics and lab chief of human molecular genetics.

Kathleen McGowan

Kathleen McGowan is a freelance magazine writer specializing in science and medicine.