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Home arrow News Archives arrow News & Reports 2004 arrow David Holtzman honored with top Alzheimer's award
David Holtzman honored with top Alzheimer's award PDF Print E-mail

 The Hope Center's David Holtzman wins a top prize for Alzheimer's research.

March 24, 2003 — David M. Holtzman, M.D., has been named one of two winners of the 2003 Potamkin Prize for Research in Picks, Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders. Holtzman is the Paul and Charlotte Hagemann Professor of Neurology and a professor of molecular biology and pharmacology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“This is the most prestigious prize in Alzheimer’s research,” says John C. Morris, M.D., co-director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the Harvey A. and Dorismae Hacker Friedman Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the School of Medicine. “Dave’s work already has dramatically improved our understanding of how brain plaques develop in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and has the potential to lead to better diagnostic methods and perhaps even a cure. We are proud to have him on our team and delighted that he has received such recognition for his research.”

The prize, which honors and rewards researchers for their work in helping advance the understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, will be awarded on April 2 at the 2003 American Academy of Neurology annual meeting at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, approximately 4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease — one in 10 people above age 65, and nearly half of people above age 85. Holtzman’s laboratory specializes in studying the early, silent stages of Alzheimer’s disease. His team played a leading role in showing how dangerous amounts of a protein called amyloid-beta (ABeta) begin to accumulate in the brain many years before symptoms arise.

Most recently, in collaboration with scientists at Eli Lilly and Company, Holtzman’s team identified a monoclonal antibody called m266, which, in mice, draws ABeta out of the brain and into the blood. In a March 2002 issue of the journal Science, the team published the successful use of m266 to identify Alzheimer’s-type changes in living mice. The test is one of the first proposed blood tests to diagnose the disease before clinical symptoms arise.

Since m266 appears to result in clearing of ABeta out of the brain, it also may break down amyloid plaques and thereby help treat the disease. Several companies now are considering clinical trials to determine whether administration of anti-ABeta antibodies improves cognitive symptoms in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.

Holtzman received a bachelor’s degree in 1983 and a medical degree in 1985 from Northwestern University. He joined the Washington University School of Medicine faculty in 1994 in the Department of Neurology and the Center for the Study of Nervous System Injury.

In addition to his laboratory and teaching duties, Holtzman is involved in clinical and research activities at the Washington University Memory and Aging Project and the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. He has received several awards and honors for his work including A Promising Work Award from the MetLife Foundation, the Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholar Award (1995) and the S. Wier Mitchell Award (1992).

Written by Gila Reckess of the Washington University School of Medicine Public Affairs office.