1997 Education Award in Neuroscience

Dr. Nancy Wexler 

Nancy Wexler's inexhaustible energy, effective leadership, and dedication have played a central role in recent progress toward a cure for Huntington's disease. A person of many talents, Dr. Wexler moves easily from public to private sector, from laboratory and classroom to primitive field location, from microgenetic data to federal health administration, from individual genetic counseling to public policy making.

Dr. Wexler's most important scientific contribution is the work she has done on Huntington's disease. In 1979, she learned of the world's largest family with Huntington's disease living along the shores of Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. For 13 successive years she and her colleagues have studied the disease in hundreds of patients and persons at risk. They have constructed a pedigree of over 15,000 people, collecting blood samples from 3,600 people in the family. These samples led to the discovery of the Huntington's disease gene at the tip of human chromosome 4. With this knowledge, a new presymptomatic test was developed which can tell, for the first time, who is carrying the fatal gene and who is free, prior to the onset of symptoms. These same blood samples have also aided in the mapping of other disease genes, including those responsible for familial Alzheimer's disease, kidney cancer, two types of neurofibromatosis, manic depression, and others.

Nancy Wexler is the Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and President of the Hereditary Disease Foundation. She received an A.B. degree cum laude in Social Relations and English from Radcliffe College in 1967, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1974. Prior to joining Columbia University in 1984, Dr. Wexler was a Health Science Administrator with the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and Executive Director of the Congressional Commission for the Control of Huntington's Disease and Its Consequences. She has received a Fulbright fellowship, the National Institutes of Health Directors Award, the first Robert J. and Claire Pasarow Foundation Award, Women's International Society Living Legacy Award, the University of Michigan Alumnae Athena Award, and was listed in Esquire Magazine's Register of distinguished men and women. In February 1992, Dr. Wexler was the featured Profile in TIME magazine. Within the last two years, Nancy Wexler was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the New York Medical College, an Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Michigan, The National Association of Biology Teachers Distinguished Service Award, The Foster Elting Bennett Award, The J. Allyn Taylor Award and The Albert Lasker Public Service Award.

From 1989 to 1995, Dr. Nancy Wexler served as Chair of the Joint NIH/DOE Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Working Group (ELSI) of the National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR). She is also a member of the External Advisory Committee for the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), and served as co-chair for HUGO Ethical, Legal and Social Issues Committee from 1991-1995. Dr. Wexler is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Nancy S. Wexler, Ph.D.
Columbia University
722 W. 168th St., Unit 58
New York, NY 10032

(212) 960-5650
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Hereditary Disease Foundation
1427 7th St., Suite 2
Santa Monica, CA 90401

(310) 458-4183
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