Chester Mathis is an American chemist who is currently the Distinguished Professor of

Radiology Radiology ( ) is the medical discipline that uses medical imaging to diagnose diseases and guide their treatment, within the bodies of humans and other animals. It began with radiography (which is why its name has a root referring to radiat ...

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

and holds the UPMC Endowed Chair of PET Research. He is known for is work with

William E. Klunk William E. Klunk is an American psychiatrist and neurologist currently the Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology and Levidow-Pittsburgh Foundation Chair in Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Disorders at University of Pittsburgh. He i ...

on a PET radiotracer for imaging

amyloid Amyloids are aggregates of proteins characterised by a Fibril, fibrillar morphology of 7–13 Nanometer, nm in diameter, a beta sheet (β-sheet) Secondary structure of proteins, secondary structure (known as cross-β) and ability to be Staining, ...

, a protein linked to neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s. His efforts led to the creation of a novel category of high-efficacy radiopharmaceutical agents, for example Pittsburgh Compound-B (PiB), which can be used to assess beta-amyloid in the living human brain using PET scanning, and which is a fluorescent analog of thioflavin T. For his work on

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

he has received the Metlife Foundation Award (2004) and the

Potamkin Prize The Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick's, Alzheimer's, and Related Diseases was established in 1988 and is sponsored by the American Academy of Neurology. The prize is funded through the philanthropy of the Potamkin Foundation. The prize is awarded ...

(2008).

References

University of Pittsburgh faculty University of California, Davis alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American biologists 20th-century American biologists Alzheimer's disease researchers {{US-academic-scientist-stub