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| First Name: | Dennis | | Last Name: | Selkoe | | Title: | Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases | | Advanced Degrees: | MD | | Affiliation: | Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital | | Department: | Department of Neurology | | Street Address 1: | 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur | | Street Address 2: | HIM 730 | | City: | Boston | | State/Province: | MA | | Zip/Postal Code: | 02115 | Country/Territory: | U.S.A. | | Phone: | 617-525-5200 | | Fax: | 617-525-5252 | | Email Address: |  |
Disclosure:
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Member reports the following financial or other potential conflicts of interest: [Last Modified: 31 January 2011]
I am a founding scientist and director of Elan Pharmaceuticals.
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View all comments by Dennis Selkoe
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Parkinson Disease, Aging Process, Alzheimer Disease
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A-beta PP/A-beta, Neuropathology, Molecular and Cell biology, Neurobiology
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Medical hospital, University
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Dennis J. Selkoe, M.D., the Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School, has devoted his career to the study of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related basic biological questions. He is a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Virginia School of Medicine. After an initial period of research training at the National Institutes of Health (NINDS), he completed a residency in neurology at the Harvard/Longwood Neurology Program and a four year fellowship in biochemistry and neuronal cell biology in the Department of Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School. In 1978, he founded an independent laboratory dedicated to applying biochemical and molecular techniques to the study of AD and related neurobiological issues.
Selkoe and colleagues broke new ground in 1982 when they developed a method of isolating the abnormal neurofibrillary tangles that are a hallmark of AD, discovered their unusual chemical properties and developed the first antibodies to them. Subsequently, Selkoe has carried out extensive experiments on the amyloid ß-protein (Aß) deposits of AD. In 1992, Selkoe and collaborators made the unexpected discovery that Aß is continuously produced by normal cells throughout life and can be readily detected in cultured cells. The finding of Aß production by normal cells led directly to the use of such cells by academic and pharmaceutical labs worldwide as a system for studying the mechanisms of Aß formation and identifying amyloid-blocking drugs to treat AD. Selkoe and coworkers went on to show that inherited mutations in the APP gene and the presenilin 1 and 2 genes cause AD by increasing the production of amyloid b-protein. Recently, Selkoe and collaborators conducted groundbreaking experiments showing that presenilins represent the long-sought g-secretase enzyme which effects intramembranous proteolysis of APP and Notch and which is a major therapeutic target in AD.
The importance of the various advances made by Dr. Selkoe on the mechanism of AD has led to his receiving, the first Metropolitan Life Foundation Award for Medical Research, the Potamkin Prize (shared with George G. Glenner) and the Leadership and Excellence in Alzheimer's Disease (LEAD) Award and MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Selkoe has also received the Pioneer Award from the Alzheimer's Association and the A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Selkoe is co-founder and co-director of the Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He was the principal founding scientist of Athena Neurosciences, Inc. He has served on the editorial boards of several biomedical journals, the Neuroscience Review Committee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the National Advisory Council on Aging (NIH)
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