TO:                 Strategic Executive Council

Department Chairs and Administrators, School of Medicine

Center & Institute Directors and Administrators

Vice Deans, Senior Associate Deans,

           Associate Deans, and Assistant Deans, School of Medicine

Faculty and Staff, School of Medicine

 

FROM:            Garland D. Anderson, M.D.

                        Dean of Medicine           

 

Thanks to a generous gift from Mrs. and Mr. George Mitchell, the scope of the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research has been expanded from focusing exclusively on Alzheimer’s disease to include neurodegenerative diseases in general.

 

Dr. Claudio Soto, who has served as the Director of the Mitchell Center for Alzheimer’s disease for the past year, is leading the initiative to expand the scope of the Center.  To reflect this expanded focus, the Center is now called the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases.

 

Dr. Soto came to UTMB in 2003, and since then his research has added to an already impressive series of breakthroughs in the detection and repair of the misshapen brain proteins responsible for Alzheimer’s and the human form of mad cow disease, bringing science closer to the creation of new methods of diagnosing and treating both brain-destroying disorders.

 

Dr. Soto holds the Green Distinguished University Chair in Neurosciences and is a Professor of neurology, neurosciences and cell biology and biochemistry and molecular biology.  He earned bachelors and doctorate degrees in Biochemistry from the University of Chile and did post-doctoral research in neurobiology at the Catholical University of Chile and in neuroscience at the New York University Medical Center.

 

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Soto on his leadership as Director of the Mitchell Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, and thanking Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell for their extraordinary generosity.