Alzheimer’s expert Rosenberg appointed Professor Emeritus of Neurology
Roger Rosenberg, M.D., a Professor of Neurology renowned as an expert in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, has been named Professor Emeritus after 50 years at UT Southwestern.
Dr. Rosenberg had been a member of the faculty at the University of California, San Diego, when he left to join UTSW as its inaugural Chair of Neurology in 1973, a position he held until 1991. He oversaw the Department’s growth into several subspecialty divisions and brought a focus that was strongly grounded in clinical practice while at the same time being intensely research-focused and scholarly. He retired from UTSW on January 1.
As Chair, Dr. Rosenberg established the presence of neurology at UTSW and multiple affiliated hospitals. For 31 years, he additionally was Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Center, which served as both a patient-care and research center.
“My emphasis here was to build up our work in neurogenetics and neurodegenerative diseases,” he said.
Dr. Rosenberg also served as President of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) from 1991 to 1993, during which he created the AAN Education and Research Foundation, now the American Brain Foundation. He has published more than 300 research and review papers in peer-reviewed journals. In 1995, he produced the first edition of Rosenberg’s Molecular and Genetic Basis of Neurological and Psychiatric Disease, which is now entering its seventh edition. As an educator, Dr. Rosenberg has mentored dozens of researchers and clinicians over decades.
Born and raised near Milwaukee, Dr. Rosenberg became interested in medicine as a child. His father served as President of Mount Sinai Hospital (now Aurora Sinai Medical Center), and his family’s doctor, Max Fox, M.D., was Director of the Southside Isolation Hospital during the polio epidemic.
“He took me on rounds. He allowed me to see patients in iron lungs at the time, and obviously, I was very impressed and very overwhelmed by seeing a viral infection of the brain producing alteration in brain function, breathing, swallowing, and paralysis,” Dr. Rosenberg said in an interview for the AAN’s 75th anniversary.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and his medical degree at Northwestern University, then completed an internship at what was formerly known as Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and a residency in neurology at Columbia University Medical School, where he was Chief Resident.
He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab of Marshall Nirenberg, Ph.D., at the NIH Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics in 1968, the same year that Dr. Nirenberg shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his “interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.”
His research interests centered on Alzheimer’s disease and Machado-Joseph disease (MJD). Like Huntington’s disease, MJD is a neurodegenerative disease caused by a genetic mutation that is dominant – only one copy of the gene is needed to cause the disease – and it worsens with each generation.
Dr. Rosenberg’s primary focus has been on developing a vaccine against Alzheimer’s. He has been awarded a patent for a DNA vaccine against the protein amyloid beta 42 (Aβ42), a major component of plaques found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.
The normal function of Aβ42 is unclear, and its precise role in the disease has not been conclusively proven. The DNA vaccine has been found to reduce Aβ42 levels in mice, rabbits, and primates and doesn’t cause inflammation – a severe side effect that has halted other types of Aβ42 immunotherapies.
“The jury’s still out,” said Dr. Rosenberg, also a member of UT Southwestern’s Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute. “We still have to do a clinical trial.”