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BIOGRAPHY
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Michael E. Phelps, PhD
Norton Simon Professor and Chair Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology Director, Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging Director, Institute for Molecular Medicine David Geffen School of Medicine University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California |
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Dr Phelps earned BS degrees in chemistry and mathematics at Western Washington State University in 1965, and a PhD in chemistry at Washington University, St. Louis, in 1970. Subsequently, he was on the medical school faculty of Washington University (1970-75), University of Pennsylvania (1976) and UCLA (1976-present). Dr Phelps is the inventor of the positron emission tomography (PET) scanner. PET is a molecular imaging technique that allows scientists and physicians to image and measure the chemistry and biology of the living body in health and disease, from mouse to man, from metabolism to gene expression. PET is a part of the changes occurring as biology and medicine merge to form molecular medicine that seeks to identify the molecular errors that produce disease and to correct them. In addition to developing several generations of PET scanners with his colleague Dr Edward Hoffman, Dr Phelps and his other UCLA colleagues and students have used PET to study the biological basis of normal function, as well as numerous disorders of the brain and heart, and cancer. For example, he and Dr Harry Chugani performed seminal studies to determine the basis of the unique attributes of childhood brain development, such as rapidly expanding behavioral repertoire; specialized learning in the formative years; and the unique means by which the child’s brain can reorganize to compensate for a lesion or surgical resection. Using PET, he and his colleagues in pediatric neurology and neurosurgery were able to identify cerebral tissue that produces seizure disorders in infants and children when all other imaging studies were normal. These findings were critical in establishing a new clinical service for the surgical treatment of childhood seizure disorders. He, along with his colleagues Gary Small, Dan Silverman, Pete Engel, Jeff Cummings, and John Mazziotta, developed unique criteria that allowed the use of PET to differentiate the various types of dementia (eg, Alzheimer’s, frontotemporal, vascular) early in the degenerative process, as well as the biological alterations identifying early stages of Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and Huntington’s disease. In Huntington’s and familial Alzheimer’s, it was shown that metabolic abnormalities could be identified with PET 7 and 5 years before symptoms, respectively. Further, Alzheimer’s could be diagnosed with 93% accuracy 3 years before the clinical diagnosis of “probable” Alzheimer’s could be made. |
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