William Langston
Dr. J. William Langston is the founder, CEO, and Scientific Director of the Parkinson's Institute. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Medicine and chairman of neurology at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, California. Dr. Langston has authored or co-authored over 250 professional publications in the field of neurology, most of which are on Parkinson's disease and related disorders. Dr. Langston gained national and international recognition in 1982 for the discovery of the link between a "synthetic heroin" contaminant and parkinsonism. This contaminant, known as MPTP (which sometimes taints MPPP, an effective synthetic opioid), is selectively toxic to the same nerve cells in the brain which die in Parkinson's disease, the Substantia nigra. The discovery of the biologic effects of this compound led to a renaissance of the basic and clinical research in Parkinson's disease. MPTP allowed the first animal representation of Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Langston's current research interests include the study of mechanisms of neuronal degeneration, the etiology of Parkinson's disease, and the development of new strategies to slow or halt disease progression. He has received numerous awards, including the Distinguished Achievement Award from Modern Medicine, the Sarah M. Poiley Award from the New York Academy of Sciences, the 30th Anniversary Award from the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, the Distinguished Clinical Investigator Award from Roche Pharmaceuticals, and most recently the 1999 Movement Disorders Research Award from the American Academy of Neurology. He wrote a book about his discovery. The Case of the Frozen Addicts. (ISBN 0-679-42465-2)
Read more about William Langston: Selected Publications
Famous quotes containing the words william and/or langston:
“Well, I know you haven’t had much experience writing and none at all in pictures. But I’ve heard about you. It all sounded like you’re just the man I wanted for a story about the Navy. I don’t want a story just about ships and planes. I want a story about the officers.... I want this story from a pen dipped in salt water not dry martinis. Do you know what I mean?”
—Frank Fenton, William Wister Haines, co-scenarist, and John Ford. John Dodge (Ward Bond)
“In the middle of the next century, when the literary establishment will reflect the multicultural makeup of this country and not be dominated by assimiliationists with similar tastes, from similar backgrounds, and of similar pretensions, Langston Hughes will be to the twentieth century what Walt Whitman was to the nineteenth.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)