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Home  CMSC Online For CMSC Members Spotlight
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| Spotlight | The Spotlights are on!
Every month, we will be introducing you to an array of MS Professionals who are active members of the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC).
Join us in giving them a warm smile and an internet handshake! | | | Archive by Last Name: A-C D-F G-I J-L M-O P-R S-U V-Z
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|  | Robert Herndon, M.D.
 Dr. Herndon received his BA degree from the University of Chicago in 1955 and his MD with honors from the University of Tennessee in 1958. Following an Internship and Neurology residency at Wayne State University, he became a fellow in Neuropathology at the Montreal Neurological Institute for the next 20 months. After a 2 year stint as a neurologist in the U.S. Air Force, he spent a year long fellowship in Neuroanatomy at Harvard.
He began his Academic career as an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Stanford Medical School. While at Stanford he began looking at cerebrospinal fluid using an electron microscope and was astonished to find bits and pieces of myelin in the spinal fluid of MS patients having an exacerbation. In 1969, he was invited to become an Associate Professor as part of the new department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins Medical School.
Believing he might be able to develop a new test for multiple sclerosis based on the myelin fragments, he developed, with Dr. Guy McKhann and his laboratory, a radio-immuno-assay for myelin basic protein. While sometimes useful, the lack of specificity for MS was disappointing. In 1975, he took over the Multiple Sclerosis clinic at Johns Hopkins from Dr. Henry McFarland who had started the clinic and was moving to NIH. He also worked as an electron microscopist in the Neurovirology laboratory during this period.
In 1977, Dr. Herndon moved to the University of Rochester as Professor and Chairman of the Center for Brain Research and Professor of Neurology. While their, he ran an MS clinic and had the good fortune to recruit Dr. Richard Rudick, Dr. Randy Schiffer and Dr. Corey Ford as fellows. Dr. Rudick subsequently served on the faculty for several years before being recuited to the Mellen MS Center at the Cleveland Clinic.
While at the University of Rochester, he developed a working relationship with Dr. Lawrence Jacobs. With Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Andres Salazar at Walter Reed Army Hospital, we developed the original Intrathecal Interferon beta-1a trial that subsequently led to the Phase III interferon beta-1a (Avonex®) trial.
In 1988, after the University of Rochester closed the Center for Brain Research, Dr. Herndon moved to Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland Oregon as Chief of Neurology and Professor of Neurology at Oregon Health Sciences University. There he participate as one of the 4 sites in the phase III interferon beta-1a trial.
In 1994, the Oregon Health Sciences University closed the portion of the Neurology Residency at Good Samaritan Hospital and, after a short period in private practice, Dr. Herndon moved to the Jackson VA Medical Center and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. In 2002 he moved from the VA to the University while continuing to run the MS clinic at the VA.
Dr. Herndon has been involved with the Consortium of MS Centers since shortly after its inception and has served as President. He received the Presidential Award from the CMSC in 2002 and its’ Life Time Achievement Award in June 2006.
In 1997, Dr. Herndon broached the subject of an “on line journal” for the CMSC. He brought it up once or twice that year and the following year, the board agreed to go ahead with the project. Substantial grants were received from Berlex, Teva, Serono, Biogen (now Biogen Idec), Eastern Paralyzed Veterans (now United Spinal) and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, the “founding sponsors”. We contacted a company which helped us put together the first several issues, still available on line. Initially it was strictly on line but subsequently, we contacted Joe D’Onofrio who agreed to publish the journal, both on line and in print, supported by the advertising revenue. This began a long term relationship with him and his team who have been very supportive of the goals of the CMSC.
During this time the journal has grown slowly. It is indexed in CINHAL and we look forward to continued progress toward indexing in Index Medicus.
| | Sergio E. Baranzini, Ph.D.
 Sergio E. Baranzini earned his degree in clinical biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1992. He graduated from the same institution in 1997 obtaining a PhD with honors in human molecular genetics. The subject of his PhD thesis was the characterization of genetic mutations leading to Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy. Dr. Baranzini then moved to the University of California at San Francisco to specialize in the analysis of complex hereditary diseases, in particular multiple sclerosis. During his postdoctoral stay in UCSF Dr. Baranzini employed state-of-the art methods to explore MS pathogenesis, including molecular biology, genomics and bioinformatics. Since 2003 Dr. Baranzini is Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at UCSF. His research involves the large throughout analysis of samples from MS patients to characterize the activity of genes during: i) different stages of the disease (i.e. remission vs. relapse), ii) differential response to treatment (i.e. good responders vs. poor responders), and iii) disease progression (i.e. benign vs. severe). In addition Dr. Baranzini is collaborating with several interdisciplinary teams worldwide to integrate all the available knowledge obtained in different research domains in an approach known as systems biology. Dr. Baranzini has published his research on MS in several top-tier journals like Science, J Immunol, and PLos Biol. He also serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for many specialized journals.
| | Dessa Sadovnick, Ph.D
Dr. Sadovnick was born in Montreal and obtained degrees from McGill University (B.Sc.,Honors Genetics; M.Sc., Human Genetics) and the University of British (Ph.D., Genetics. Dr. Sadovnick is a Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and the Faculty of Medicine, Division of Neurology, UBC. She is a Michael Smith Distinguished Scholar.
Dr. Sadovnick is the Principal Investigator (with Dr. G.C. Ebers) of the nation-wide “Canadian Collaborative Project on Genetic Susceptibility to MS” and is a co-Principal Investigator on “Prospective study of the epidemiology, pathobiology, and clinical outcome of Canadian children with clinically isolated demyelinating syndromes (CIS)”. She is the co-director/academic advisor for the M.Sc.Genetic Counseling Program at UBC. She has published extensively (over 190 articles in peer-review journals) and serves as a reviewer for a wide variety of medical journals and grant review panels. She is often an invited speaker at Canadian and International (Europe, Asia, South America, Russia, Australia) scientific meetings.
Dr. Sadovnick is a member of the Medical Advisory Committee of the MS Society of Canada and on several international advisory groups for MS. She is also a Board Member of the B.C. Division of the MS Society of Canada.
Dr. Sadovnick has just been awarded the MS Society of Canada Merit award.
| | Thomas Mack, M.D., MPH
 After receiving a BA from Carleton College, Dr. Mack received an MD from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, took an internship at Colorado General Hospital, a residency, and then a fellowship in infectious disease at the University of Washington Hospitals. After a year at CDC in Atlanta, he studied the epidemiology of smallpox and possible control strategies in Lahore, Pakistan for 2 years and returned through Geneva, where he reviewed the experience with smallpox imported into Europe. He then took an MPH in tropical medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health, and joined the epidemiology faculty at that institution in 1970. Having shifted his interest to chronic disease, Dr Mack joined the Departments of Pathology and Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California, where he long directed the Los Angeles County cancer registry and conducted analytic studies of cancer etiology, most notably of breast cancer, malignant melanoma, pancreas cancer, and Hodgkin lymphoma. He is a past co-editor of CANCER IN FIVE CONTINENTS. More recently he has been interested in the study of chronic disease using twin subjects, and has initiated two of the largest twin registries, one of twin pairs affected by chronic disease and one of healthy population-based pairs. Among studies based on observations of such twin pairs and published recently are those strongly suggesting that early exposure to solar flux diminishes the risk of multiple sclerosis. In addition to his research publications, Dr. Mack has published a compendium of geographic and other descriptive patterns of neoplasm incidence in the Los Angeles population by site and histology (CANCERS IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT, Academic Press, 2004).
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