At Mount Sinai there is a long tradition of clinical excellence in the treatment of movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Dystonia.
The Department of Neurology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Lowenstein Foundation have had a long-standing relationship that has included continuous grant support between 1995-2006 and the endowment of the Robert and John M. Bendheim Parkinson's Disease Center.
This collaboration has enabled the Department to recruit leading neuroscientists to study Parkinson's disease (PD), establish state-of-the-art research programs, develop new medical and surgical therapies for Parkinson's disease, organize conferences that disseminate information to physicians and scientists, and establish a mentoring program for young investigators. In short, the Lowenstein Foundation's support has helped make Mount Sinai's Parkinson's Disease Program one of the finest in the world.
With the Foundation's support, the Robert and John M. Bendheim Parkinson's Disease Research Center has provided a nucleus for multidisciplinary translational research studies, and a forum for collaboration that successfully attracts young physicians and investigators to the field. The Department also has been able to build an infrastructure to develop an interdisciplinary research team whose research is focused on determining the cause of cell death in PD and developing better treatments for PD patients.
For example, support from the Lowenstein Foundation brought Stuart Sealfon, M.D., and his laboratory to the Department of Neurology, where he began to focus his research on issues relevant to PD. Dr. Sealfon is a brilliant molecular biologist who was the first to clone the dopamine D2 long receptor. Since joining the Department, he has begun to use the new technique of gene micro array to understand better how dopaminergic drugs work in PD and what genes and proteins within the cell are responsible for determining whether the cell lives or dies. This research already has led to important and fundamental insights into the cell signals that underlie the neurodegenerative process as well as the neuroprotective effects that occur with the use of dopamine agonists. Dr. Sealfon's work has led to peer-reviewed publications in leading clinical scientific journals and to substantial external grant support. Further, these discoveries have paved the way for developing new drugs that can modulate these signals in order to enhance the promotion of cell survival and resistance to the neurodegenerative process.
With the recruitment of Kevin McNaught, Ph.D., a basic scientist from Harvard University who is a leading authority in the ubiquitin-proteasome system, we have made great strides in understanding the status of the ubiquitin-proteasome system in PD and how we might use this information to develop new, more effective therapies. This research has led to the publication of our work in Nature Reviews Neurosciences, one of the most prestigious science journals in the world.
Finally, research support from the Lowenstein Foundation permitted the recruitment of Michele Tagliati, M.D., and Ron Alterman, M.D., one of the most respected restorative neuroscience teams in the United States. With their advanced deep brain stimulation (DBS) and functional neurosurgery program, Mount Sinai has further solidified its position as a leading institution for the study and treatment of movement disorders.
Over the past decade, DBS has revolutionized the treatment of advanced PD and other movement disorders. In properly selected patients, DBS markedly reduces motor fluctuations, eliminates medication-induced dyskinesia, improves gait, and decreases medication requirements by an average of 40 percent. For many, the results of this surgery are life altering. Many PD patients who experienced intolerable disability have become totally independent after having had this procedure. This benefit has an obvious impact on the caregiver as well. Mount Sinai has played a major role in designing experiments to assess this therapy, in publishing the results in the New England Journal of Medicine, and in obtaining FDA approval. Drs. Tagliati and Alterman have as much experience with this procedure and as good results as any team in the United States. Their recruitment to Mount Sinai places this institution at the very top of Centers with expertise in DBS treatment.
There is great optimism that transplantation strategies, trophic factors, and gene therapies can help to restore or replace degenerating neurons in conditions like PD and thereby potentially halt or reverse the degenerative process. Mount Sinai is extremely well placed to pursue these areas of research, housing one of the leading gene therapy and stem cell institutes in the world. In addition, Mount Sinai conducted one of the two major trials of dopamine cell transplantation in PD and is now involved in organizing one of the first gene therapy studies for PD.
We are a part of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Our facilities are located within The Mount Sinai Medical Center. The Movement Disorders Program has three interrelated components: patient care, teaching, and research. Therefore, in addition to caring directly for patients, our responsibilities include developing new research therapies to help your condition, evaluating the collected results, and sharing those results with students, colleagues, and other researchers through meetings, publications and lectures. These efforts are aimed at helping you by way of advanced scientific understanding of your condition. Because of this multifaceted commitment, you may interact with many different professionals, including neurologists, clinical fellows, nurses, medical students and various other clinical and research investigators. These people are directly under the supervision of the attending staff.
