Dennis J. Selkoe (born 25 September 1943) is an American physician (neurologist) known for his research into the molecular basis of

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 ...

. In 1985 he became Co-Director of the Center for Neurological Diseases and from 1990, Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurological Diseases at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

. He is also a Fellow of the AAAS and a member of the

National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, En ...

Career and early life

Selkoe studied at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

(Bachelor's degree 1965) and the

University of Virginia School of Medicine The University of Virginia School of Medicine (UVA SoM) is the graduate medical school of the University of Virginia. The school's facilities are on the University of Virginia grounds adjacent to Academical Village in Charlottesville, Virginia. ...

(M. D. 1969). He took up a residency at the

University of Pennsylvania Hospital The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) is the flagship hospital of Penn Medicine and is located in the University City section of West Philadelphia. It is consistently ranked as one of the top hospitals in the United States. Histor ...

(1969). From 1970 to 1972, he performed research at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

and continued his residency as a neurologist at the Peter Bent Brigham Children's Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. In 1975, he held the position of instructor at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, before moving up to assistant professor in 1978. In 1978, he established a laboratory at Brigham and Women's to apply biochemical and cell biological methods to the study of degenerative neural diseases such as Alzheimer's and

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

. In 1982, he and collaborators isolated the clusters of neurofibrils typical of Alzheimer's disease and described their chemical properties. With other laboratories, he showed that the

tau protein The tau proteins (abbreviated from tubulin associated unit) are a group of six highly soluble protein isoforms produced by alternative splicing from the gene ''MAPT'' (microtubule-associated protein tau). They have roles primarily in maintaining ...

of the microfibrils is their main component. With his laboratory, he also conducted extensive research on the second pathogenic component,

senile plaque Amyloid plaques (also known as neuritic plaques, amyloid beta plaques or senile plaques) are extracellular deposits of the amyloid beta (Aβ) protein mainly in the grey matter of the brain. Degenerative neuronal elements and an abundance of mi ...

s of

beta-amyloid Amyloid beta (Aβ or Abeta) denotes peptides of 36–43 amino acids that are the main component of the amyloid plaques found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. The peptides derive from the amyloid precursor protein (APP), which i ...

(Aβ). They discovered in 1992 that Aβ is also formed in normal cells from its precursor

amyloid precursor protein Amyloid-beta precursor protein (APP) is an integral membrane protein expressed in many biological tissue, tissues and concentrated in the synapses of neurons. It functions as a cell surface receptor and has been implicated as a regulator ...

. The study of these processes led to the identification of inhibitors for the formation of Aβ. Selkoe was also able to show with his laboratory that innate mutations in the APP genes and the

presenilin Presenilins are a family of related multi-pass transmembrane proteins which constitute the catalytic subunits of the gamma-secretase intramembrane protease protein complex. They were first identified in screens for mutations causing early onset ...

genes cause Alzheimer's disease (increased Aβ production). In 1999, he and co-workers identified presenilin as a component of the long-sought-after

gamma-secretase Gamma secretase is a multi-subunit protease complex, itself an integral membrane protein, that cleaves single-pass transmembrane proteins at residues within the transmembrane domain. Proteases of this type are known as intramembrane proteases. Th ...

, one of the enzymes involved in the pathogenic conversion of APP to Aβ in Alzheimer's disease. In his laboratory, it could also be shown that small, soluble oligomers from Aβ can damage the synapses and have an influence on memory performance. He was the principal founding scientist of the pharmaceutical company Athena Neurosciences (later Elan Corporation). In 2001 he was one of the founders of the

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Medical Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair. He has been on the board of Prothena Corporation since 2013. He has an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

of 183 according to

Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is an artificial intelligence–powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI and publicly released in November 2015. It uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries ...

Awards and honors

* Life Achievement Award from the Alzheimer's Association (2008) * Member of the

(2005) * Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(2003) * Dr A. H. Heineken Prize for Medicine (2002) * Rita Hayworth Award from the

Alzheimer's Association The Alzheimer's Association was founded by Jerome H. Stone with the help of several family members in Chicago, Illinois, and incorporated on April 10, 1980, as the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association, Inc. It is a non-profit Ame ...

(1995) *

Honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(1991) *

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 ...

(1989) *

Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease The Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease were awarded annually from 1986 to 2016 to recognize scientific contributions toward a better understanding of the underlying causes, prevention, and treatments of Alzheimer's ...

(1986) * Wood Kalb Foundation Prize (1984)

Publications

Authored

Immunization Against Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Neurodegenerative Disorders
(2003)
The therapeutics of Alzheimer's disease: Where we stand and where we are heading
(2013)
SnapShot: Pathobiology of Alzheimer's Disease
(2013) *
Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease
(2012)
Resolving controversies on the path to Alzheimer's therapeutics
(2011)
Alzheimer's disease
(2011)
Biochemistry and molecular biology of amyloid beta-protein and the mechanism of Alzheimer's disease
(2008)
Soluble oligomers of the amyloid beta-protein impair synaptic plasticity and behavior
(2008)
Developing preventive therapies for chronic diseases: lessons learned from Alzheimer's disease
(2007)
Amyloid beta-peptide is produced by cultured cells during normal metabolism: a reprise
(2006)
The ups and downs of Abeta
(2006)

Co-authored

*
A Stearoyl–Coenzyme A Desaturase Inhibitor Prevents Multiple Parkinson Disease Phenotypes in α‐Synuclein Mice
(with Silke Nuber PhD, Alice Y. Nam BS, Molly M. Rajsombath BS, Haley Cirka Xiaoping Hronowski PhD, Junmin Wang PhD, Kevin Hodgetts PhD, Liubov S. Kalinichenko PhD, Christian P. Müller PhD, Vera Lambrecht MS, Jürgen Winkler MD, Andreas Weihofen PhD, Thibaut Imberdis PhD, Ulf Dettmer PhD, Saranna Fanning Ph) (2020)
Analysis of α-synuclein species enriched from cerebral cortex of humans with sporadic dementia with Lewy bodies
(with John B Sanderson, Suman De, Haiyang Jiang, Matteo Rovere, Ming Jin, Ludovica Zaccagnini, Aurelia Hays Watson, Laura De Boni, Valentina N Lagomarsino, Tracy L Young-Pearse, Xinyue Liu, Thomas C Pochapsky, Bradley T Hyman, Dennis W Dickson, David Klenerman, Dennis J Selkoe, Tim Bartels) (2020)
Amyloid β-protein and beyond: the path forward in Alzheimer's disease
(with Walsh DM) (2020)
Dynamics of plasma biomarkers in Down syndrome: the relative levels of Aβ42 decrease with age, whereas NT1 tau and NfL increase
(with Mengel D, Liu W, Glynn RJ, Strydom A, Lai F, Rosas HD, Torres A, Patsiogiannis V, Skotko B, Walsh DM. ) (2020)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Selkoe, Dennis J. 1943 births Living people Columbia University alumni University of Virginia School of Medicine alumni Harvard Medical School faculty American neurologists Winners of the Heineken Prize Members of the National Academy of Medicine