Alexander Disease

Albee Messing, V.M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Neuropathology in the Department of Comparative Biosciences, and the Director of the Waisman Center (an international center dedicated to research, education, and clinical services in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities), at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Messing received his undergraduate degree in biology from Yale, in 1974, and his veterinary and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, in 1978 and 1982, respectively. He continued post-doctoral studies in experimental and clinical neuropathology at Penn under the tutorship of Nicholas K. Gonatas, M.D., and then joined the faculty at Wisconsin in 1985. He is the recipient of both the Weil and the Moore Awards from the American Association of Neuropathologists, was a Shaw Scholar of the Milwaukee Foundation, and delivered the Peter Lampert Memorial Lecture at UCSD in 2003, the Santiago Ramon y Cajal Lecture for the Spanish Neurological Society in 2010, and the Parisi Lecture for the American Association of Neuropathologists in 2013. Dr. Messing's research is directed at understanding developmental and pathologic aspects of glial cell biology. With his collaborators, he developed tools for targeting gene expression to glia in vivo, and discovered GFAP as the genetic basis for Alexander disease. For over 20 years he has led an NIH-funded research program that is focused on understanding the mechanisms of Alexander disease and developing strategies for its treatment. He is a member of the scientific advisory boards for the United Leukodystrophy Foundation and for the Charcot-Marie-Tooth Association. He has published over 160 scientific peer-reviewed papers, reviews, book chapters, and books.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of Alexander disease, a rare and devastating neurological disorder that often affects the white matter of the brain and spinal cord.