Jeffrey Bluestone and Robert Mahley
Two UCSF faculty scientists have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced on April 24, 2006.
Jeffrey A. Bluestone, PhD, director of the UCSF Diabetes Center, and Robert W. Mahley, MD, PhD, president of the UCSF-affiliated J. David Gladstone Institutes, were among 175 new fellows elected to the academy, which includes among its members prominent scientists, scholars, artists, business leaders and public policy experts.
Bluestone is widely recognized for discoveries that have reshaped our understanding of the immune system. He has pioneered the development of new therapies to "retune" the immune response, reducing harmful autoimmune reactions, as well as immune reactions against transplanted tissues and cells. His research has helped define the critical importance of the body's two-part mechanism for launching a T-cell response, known as T-cell costimulation.
He is director of the Immune Tolerance Network, an international program that is accelerating clinical trials of safer and more effective immunotherapies for transplantation, autoimmune disease, and allergy and asthma. He holds the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professorship in Metabolism and Endocrinology at UCSF.
Mahley is president and senior investigator at the J. David Gladstone Institutes. A professor of medicine and pathology at UCSF, he studies plasma lipoproteins and particularly apolipoprotein (apo) E. His seminal research has defined apoE's critical role in cholesterol homeostasis and atherosclerosis.
He has also made fundamental contributions to understanding the role of apoE in the nervous system, specifically in nerve injury and regeneration, and in the remodeling of neurites on neuronal cells. These findings have laid the groundwork for an explosion of research linking apoE4 to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease and neurodegeneration.
Mahley is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.
