FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, November 6th, 2001
CONTACT:
Floyd E. Bloom, M.D.
Founding Chief Executive Officer
(858) 677-0466
NEUROME, INC. ANNOUNCES DR. TOMAS
HÖKFELT AS FIRST SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
LA JOLLA, CA – Neurome, Inc. announced today the appointment
of Tomas Hökfelt, M.D., Ph.D., as the first member of
its Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Hökfelt, a Professor
in the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet
in Stockholm, Sweden, is a world leader in the mapping of
chemical components in neurotransmission in the brain.
“Tomas Hökfelt is not only an innovator, but he
was the first to notice the co-existence of families of neurotransmitters
in the same neuron, breaking a long held concept of how neurons
communicate with each other,” said Dr. Floyd Bloom,
Neurome's chief executive officer. “His theories of
chemical communication in the brain will be critical to apply
to the discoveries that our company hopes to make.”
Throughout his career, Dr. Hökfelt has focused his research
on areas associated with the localization of neurotransmitters
and other messengers in the nervous system, using histochemical
techniques. His current projects center around the possibility
that neurons produce and release more than one messenger at
synapses, while simultaneously understanding the implications
of such coexistence of multiple messengers.
“Neurome's remarkable progress in the industrialization
of neuroanatomy provides us with a preview of the future of
neuroscience, and I am excited to join the Neurome science
team in this promising work,” commented Hökfelt.
Born in Stockholm in 1940, and raised in Sweden and Germany,
Dr. Hökfelt pursued his undergraduate medical studies
at Karolinska Institutet, where he also earned his Ph.D. and
M.D. In 1969, he was appointed assistant professor at the
Swedish Medical Research Council. In 1979, Dr. Hökfelt
became Professor in Histology with Cell Biology at Karolinska
Institutet and he served as the vice chairman of its Department
of Neuroscience at the Institutet from 1993-1999.
Presenter of over 40 plenary and keynote lectures at distinguished
universities and institutions, Dr. Hökfelt has edited
many books/handbook volumes related to neuroscience, and has
served on the editorial boards of numerous journals including
Neuroscience, Brain Research, Peptides, Science, and Experimental
Brain Research.
Dr. Hökfelt is the recipient of over 15 major awards
for his neuroscience research, including two awards from the
Royal Academy of Sciences, Stockholm (1978 and 1979), The
New York Academy of Sciences Award in Biological and Medical
Sciences (1985), the Artois-Baillet Latour Health Prize (1987),
The Bristol-Myers Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience
Research (1988), Anders Jahre's Prize (1990), and The Eli
Lilly Preclinical Research Award (1991).
Dr. Hökfelt is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences
(USA), and has been named Fogarty International Scholar at
the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland), Associate
of Neuroscience Research Program (Boston and New York), Honorary
Member of the American Physiological Society, and Honorary
Member of the Centre for Neuroscience, University College
(London). Additionally, he is a Member of the International
Scientific Programme Committee for the Sixth IBRO World Congress
of Neuroscience, Member and Chairman of the Committee of the
Dargut and Milena Kemali Foundation, Member of the Nobel Assembly,
and Member of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Neuroscience
of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.
Neurome, Inc. develops standardized, quantitative databases
that accurately depict and integrate gene expression patterns
in the three-dimensional context of the brain's structures,
circuits and cells, and deploys these databases in primary
research directed toward the discovery and development of
gene targets for enhancement of brain function and treatment
of brain-based disease. Neurome performs contract brain research
for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, while at the
same time pursuing its own in-house and collaborative research
protocols. The data collected from these efforts will populate
an evolving, comprehensive database available by subscription
and useful on a broad level for analyses of mouse models of
brain function and disease. In this regard, the application
of the Neurome technologies will provide rigorous, quantitative
data that are optimally suited to the measurement of subtle
cell-type specific shifts in gene expression, as well as progression
and prevention of degenerative events affecting specific cell
classes and brain regions.
For more information, please contact Neurome, Inc., 11149
North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, California 92037-1031.
Telephone: (858) 677-0466; Fax (858) 677-0458; Web site: www.neurome.com. |
