DOI: 10.1097/01.NT.0000473461.90824.22
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Issn Print: 1533-7006
Publication Date: 2015/10/22
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Excerpt
Frank M. Longo, MD, PhD, the George and Lucy Becker professor and chairman of the department of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, was recently awarded the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF)'s inaugural Melvin R. Goodes Prize for researchers working in drug discovery for Alzheimer's disease (AD). The award grants researchers $150,000 to support the development of novel and effective treatments, said Howard Fillit, MD, founding executive director and chief scientific officer of the ADDF.
Dr. Longo will use the prize money to continue to work on a promising molecule to treat AD. The Goodes Family Foundation committed $750,000 to fund the prize for the next ten years. The ADDF matched that contribution.
Frank Longo could easily have gone into the family business, managing the Toyota car dealership his father, Dominic, had built up from a dusty lot east of downtown Los Angeles and intended to pass down to his sons. But Longo had other ideas. Growing up with a sister who had cerebral palsy, he had a strong sense of purpose, as early as age six, that he was going to become a physician and reverse whatever had contributed to his sister's complex neurologic and motor deficits.
In 1981, Dr. Longo finished medical school at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he felt the strong pull of laboratory research. At UCSD, he had taken classes on developmental neurobiology with a veteran neuroscientist, Silvio Varon, MD, who was studying nerve growth factor as a possible treatment to promote survival of brain cells. He was hooked.
Dr. Longo remembers visiting Dr. Varon in his laboratory and asking if he could work with him. “Come here, look here,” the scientist said, drawing him inches from the neck of a microscope. Dr. Longo's eyes locked onto the scope and he stared down at neurons on two slides. On one slide, neurons were randomly taking up space. On the other, the neurons were bathed in nerve growth factor, “and it looked like the neurites were climbing out of the dish. It was like staring at a live planet in an observatory for the first time,” Dr. Longo recalled. “It was that thrilling.”
Dr. Longo would ultimately stay on to complete his doctorate at UCSD, working in Dr. Varon's lab, where he would elucidate the role of growth factors in peripheral nerve regeneration. Dr. Varon had passed on to Dr. Longo one of his greatest lessons: “I learned the power of biological mechanisms to advance treatment for neurological diseases,” he said.
Around that time, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) was drawing clinicians with a penchant for research, so Dr. Longo headed up north to UCSF to finish his residency. One of his mentors at UCSF was the late Robert A. Fishman, MD, well respected as a master teacher, researcher, and clinician in the world of neurology. Dr. Fishman had been chair at UCSF since 1966 and had built the department from a handful of neurologists and one small grant from the National Institutes of Health into one of the most respected clinical and research programs in the country.
Dr. Fishman taught by example, Dr. Longo said: “He could diagnose a neurological problem by watching a person's gait and deliver the diagnostic news with compassion and gentleness.” When Dr. Fishman asked Dr. Longo to stay on at UCSF after his residency, the junior neurologist was happy to say yes.
