|
Contact
Us
|
|
home
> activities > awards >
education > 1997.htm
|
Site
Map |
| 1997
Award for Education 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
(212) 960-5667
(212) 781-2661 - Fax
Hereditary Disease
Foundation
1427 7th St., Suite 2
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 458-4183
(310) 458-3937 - Fax
|
