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April 29, 2002


 



Five Emory Health Sciences Faculty Recognized As Most Highly Cited Researchers Worldwide



The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) has identified five Emory faculty members within the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center as among the world's most highly cited scientific researchers worldwide.



The five Emory scholars are Mahlon R. DeLong, M.D., professor of neurology; Michael J. Kuhar, Ph.D., Charles Howard Candler professor of pharmacology and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar; Kenneth P. Minneman, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology; Bruce H. Wainer, M.D., professor of pathology and laboratory medicine; and Allan I. Levey, M.D., Ph.D, professor of neurology.

The researchers are included in ISIHighlyCited.com. This new web-based research resource brings together the publication and achievement records of preeminent researchers. ISI identified and evaluated approximately 19 million articles or source records by 24,000 authors in 101 countries between 1981 and 1999 to determine the most highly cited researchers in their respective disciplines. Researchers were selected for inclusion in the ISI web database based on the total number of citations to their publications within a given category – a quantifiable demonstration of their impact or influence. Of the hundreds of thousands of articles published in research journals every year, most contain lists of citations, or references, which are authors' acknowledgments of their debt to the published research findings of others. The researchers selected by ISI as "highly cited" comprise less than one half of one percent of the almost five million researchers in the ISI Citation Database.

Visitors to the web site (http://www.ISIHighlyCited.com) are able to identify key individuals, departments and laboratories that have made essential contributions to the development of science and technology in recent decades.

Four of the Emory scientists — Drs. DeLong, Kuhar, Levey, and Wainer, were included in the category of neuroscience, which listed 110 highly cited scientists in 185 countries. Dr. Minneman was one of 108 highly cited scientists worldwide in the pharmacology category.
  • Mahlon DeLong has been described as one of the most important basic science researchers in Parkinson's disease in the past decade. At Emory, he heads one of the nation's largest and most distinguished groups of investigators studying Parkinson's and related neurological diseases. Emory's Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence – one of three in the nation – was awarded a grant of $7.5 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1999. Dr. DeLong also directs Emory's NIH-supported Center for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in Neurodegenerative Diseases. Dr. DeLong's research in the 1990s led to a new understanding of the mechanisms of Parkinson's disease and opened the door to a revival of pallidotomy— a surgical technique that uses radio frequency waves to destroy small groups of cells in the brain as a way of controlling the symptoms of Parkinson's. His development of a microelectrode brain mapping system allowed the targeting of specific brain cells. His finding that the subthalamic nucleus is a key brain structure in Parkinson's led to the development of additional innovative approaches, including deep-brain stimulation, a less-invasive way of moderating the symptoms of Parkinson's.

  • Michael Kuhar is one of the world's leading neuroscientists in the study of addiction. His research focuses on the biochemical and physiological mechanisms of drug abuse and the development of novel medications to treat addiction, specifically cocaine addiction, for which no medication exists. Dr. Kuhar is chief of the Division of Neuroscience at Emory's Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. He and his colleagues discovered the exact mechanism by which cocaine disrupts the brain's levels of dopamine, a chemical that helps brain cells communicate. This important finding directed scientists to focus on restoring normal dopamine system function in drug abusers.

  • Allan Levey is internationally recognized for his pioneering research into the chemical, molecular and pharmacologic organization of brain systems vulnerable in Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. His work has contributed to understanding the brain systems involved in neurodegenerative disorders and in identifying molecular targets for new therapeutic strategies. Dr. Levey is director of the Emory-Morehouse Alzheimer's Disease Center and the Emory Neurodegenerative Disease Center. He has been honored with the American Neurological Association Derek Denny-Brown Neurological Scholar Award and the National Parkinson Foundation Heikkila Research Scholar Award.

  • Bruce Wainer is professor of pathology and neurology at Emory University School of Medicine and chief of pathology at Wesley Woods Geriatric Center, which is part of Emory Healthcare. He also holds the Alice and Roy Richards endowed Chair of Alzheimer's Research. Dr. Wainer's laboratory was the first to develop monoclonal antibodies to study systems in the brain called cholinergic neuronal systems, which are vulnerable in Alzheimer's disease. His laboratory also pioneered techniques to immortalize brain cells, establishing permanent cell lines that can be used to study signaling pathways and genetic mechanisms that control neuronal development, differentiation and survival.

  • Kenneth Minneman was appointed Charles Howard Candler Professor of Pharmacology at Emory University in 2000. Since he joined the Emory faculty in 1980, Dr. Minneman has been funded continuously by the NIH for his research on adrenergic receptors -– a key component of signaling mechanisms in the brain. He has received the ASPET John Jacob Abel Award for the most outstanding young pharmacologist and the PhRMA Foundation Award in Excellence for Basic Pharmacology. Dr Minneman has served on both the Pharmacology and the Cardiovascular Renal Study Sections of the NIH and as Chairman of the Molecular Signaling Study Committee of the American Heart Association. He has served as Associate Editor for Molecular Pharmacology, The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and Pharmacological Reviews and Communications. He is currently a member of the Executive Council of the American Society for Pharmacology.

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