Dennis Selkoe, MD

Dennis Selkoe, the Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, has devoted his career to the use of molecular approaches to study Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease and related basic biological questions. He is a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Virginia School Of Medicine. After initial research training at the National Institutes of Health (NINDS), he completed a Residency in Neurology at the Harvard/Longwood Program and a postdoctoral fellowship in Neuronal cell biology and Neurochemistry in the Department of Neuroscience, HMS. In 1978, he founded a laboratory applying biochemical and cell biological techniques to the study of human neuro-degeneration.

Selkoe and coworkers broke new ground in 1982 when they developed a method to isolate the abnormal neurofibrillary tangles that are a hallmark of Alzheimer disease (AD) and described their unusual chemical properties.

Selkoe is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He co-founded and co-directs the Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Selkoe was the principal founding scientist of Athena Neurosciences, now Elan Pharmaceuticals.