Prof. Pierluigi Gambetti Department of Pathology, Case Western Reverse University, USA

Pierluigi Gambetti graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Bologna School of Medicine in 1959. After serving with Honor in the army special corps, he trained in the Department of Neurology of the University of Bologna under the supervision of Professor Elio Lugaresi. In 1997, Dr. Gambetti founded the... read moreNational Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center, a center that monitors prion diseases in the United States. The Center is under the sponsorship of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and has received both national and international attention. Dr. Gambetti currently holds the position of director of the Center, and as such is involved in national and global health issues related to prion diseases. Dr. Gambetti has been a member of the National Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Medical and Scientific Advisory Board. He has been on the editorial boards of many prominent journals, including Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, Neurobiology of Aging, Journal of Neuropathology and Applied Neurology, Brain Pathology, Neurology and Journal of Alzheimer Disease, and Acta Neuropathologica. He has served on many committees and is past President of the American Association of Neuropathologists. He has been elected Honor Member of the Societe Belge de Neurologie and of the Italian Society of Virology. He is currently Chairman of the Prion Study Group of the International Commission on the Taxonomy of Viruses, a member of the Advisory Committee on Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE) of the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health, Labor and Human Services, and a member of the TSE Expert Consultant Panel of The National Academies Institute of Medicine. Dr. Gambetti has received the Merit to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award and the Leadership and Excellence Award in Alzheimer Disease (LEAD) Award from the National Institute on Aging. He has won the Weil Award from the American Association of Neuropathologists for the Best Experimental Paper in Neuropathology and was winner of the Potamkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology for excellence in research in neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Gambetti is a leader in research on Alzheimer's and prion diseases. In Alzheimer's disease, he and his colleagues have been focusing on the presence, characterization, and role in amyloid formation of the soluble amyloid beta peptide (A beta). Dr. Gambetti's research on prion diseases began with the discovery of fatal familial insomnia (FFI), the first disease associated with the inability to sleep, followed in 1992 by the startling demonstration that FFI is a prion disease linked to a mutation in codon 178 of the prion protein gene (PRNP).