A Rochester researcher whose work has opened up a whole new avenue in Alzheimer's disease research has received a major prize from the American Academy of Neurology.
Berislav Zlokovic, M.D., Ph.D.,director of the Center for Neurodegenerative and Vascular Brain Disorders at the University of Rochester Medical Center, will receive the 2009 Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick's, Alzheimer's, and Related Diseases during the AAN annual meeting later this month in Seattle.
Zlokovic will split the $100,000 prize with two other researchers, Michael Wolfe, Ph.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Robert Vassar, Ph.D., of Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. The prize, which honors researchers for their work on Alzheimer's disease and related disorders, will go toward the investigators' Alzheimer's research.
A professor in both the departments of Neurosurgery and Neurology, Zlokovic is recognized worldwide for his pioneering research on the blood vessels in the brain and the crucial role they play in our health. He has made a series of surprising findings that are forming the basis for new avenues of treatment that would complement the stable of medications that doctors now have to treat patients with the disease.
He has shown that the brain's vascular system and the blood-brain barrier play a key role in ridding the brain of the toxic amyloid beta that is present in the brains of patients. His team has identified several molecules that falter when the toxic protein accumulates in the brain, and he has demonstrated several strategies for preventing or lowering its accumulation in the brain. Partly as a result of his work, new drugs are being tested in people in a completely new effort to prevent or slow the progression of Alzheimer's.