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NFCA Scientific/Medical Advisory Board member wins celiac research award
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On March 16, 2007, the William K. Warren Medical Research Center for
Celiac Disease at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine hosted a
one-day scientific symposium on celiac disease, titled Celiac Disease: New Insights in Diagnosis, Pathogenesis and Therapy.
The first-ever William Warren, Jr. Prize for Excellence in Celiac
Disease Research, with a prize of $25,0000 funded by the Oklahoma-based
William K. Warren Foundation was awarded to Ludvig Sollid, M.D., Ph.D., professor at the Immunology Institute at the
University of Oslo in Norway. Sollid, who was nominated for the award
by Nobel Laureate Rolf Zinkernagel, was selected by a
national panel
from among ten world-class scientists nominated for the prize.
Sollid is among a stellar list of speakers for the event, which also
included Frits Koning, Ph.D., Professor of Immunology at Leiden
University Medical Center in the Netherlands; Alaa Rostom, M.D.,
associate professor of medicine and community health science at the
University of Calgary in Canada; Chaitan Khosla, Ph.D., professor of
chemistry, clinical engineering and biochemistry at Stanford
University; and Martin F. Kagnoff, M.D., professor of medicine and
pediatrics at UCSD and director of the William K. Warren Medical
Research Center for Celiac Disease.
Sollid's research at the University of Oslo demonstrated that in order
for a person to develop Celiac Disease, he or she must have inherited
specific genes from either or both parents. He and his colleagues
defined the mechanism and structural basis by which specific
molecules contribute to the disease.
Sollid's essential new insights into the pathogenesis of Celiac Disease
underlie several new therapies currently being explored for Celiac
Disease.
UCSD's Research Center and the symposium are funded by a $2.5 million
gift from the William K. Warren Foundation, announced in December
2005. Research investigators at the center include Kagnoff, a
widely recognized expert in the field of celiac disease; Michael Karin,
Ph.D., UCSD School of Medicine professor of Pharmacology, widely
recognized for his studies on the signaling and regulation of
inflammation; and Hilde Cheroute, Ph.D., UCSD associate adjunct
professor of medicine, a world authority in the immunology of the small
intestine.
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