2025 Avis Professorship: Howard Gendelman, MD | Reaching an Effective Immunotherapy for Alzheimer’s Disease

‘A Presentation in the UTHSC Distinguished Lecture Series on Drug Discovery & Development’

Join the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences for the 2025 Avis Professorship Presentation featuring this year's recipient, Howard E. Gendelman, MD. 

Margaret R. Larson Professor of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases
Chair, UNMC Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience

College of Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center. 

Sponsored by The Kenneth E. Avis Distinguished Visiting Professorship Endowment

Howard E. Gendelman, MD, is the Margaret R. Larson Professor of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience, and Director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disorders at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Gendelman is credited with co-developing ultra-long antiretroviral medicines and with demonstrating the role of brain immunity in neural cell damage. The consequent pharmacologic and immune transformative therapeutics were aimed at preventing, treating, slowing, or reversing infectious and degenerative neural maladies. All are considered transformative. He is credited for the demonstration that AIDS dementia is a reversible metabolic encephalopathy. He is a co-founder of Exavir Therapeutics, Inc. Dr. Gendelman obtained a bachelor’s degree in natural sciences and russian studies from Muhlenberg College and his MD from the Pennsylvania State University-Hershey Medical Center, where he was the 1999 Distinguished Alumnus. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Montefiore Hospital, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and was a clinical and research fellow in neurology and infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. He occupied faculty and research positions at Johns Hopkins, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Center, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and the Henry Jackson Foundation before joining the University of Nebraska Medical Center faculty in March of 1993. He retired from the US Army with the rank of lieutenant colonel Howard E. Gendelman, MD | Department of Pharmacology and ... et al. Dr. Gendelman has authored more than 600 peer-reviewed publications, edited 12 books and monographs, holds 132 patents, is the editor-in-chief and founder of the NeuroImmune Pharmacology and Therapy. He has been an invited lecturer to more than 300 scientific seminars and symposia and the recipient of numerous local, national, and international honors. He is considered a luminary of the Nebraska Research Community, attested by his receipt of the Henry L. Moses Award in Basic Science; the Carter-Wallace Fellow for Distinction in AIDS Research, the David T. Purtilo Distinguished Chair of Pathology and Microbiology; the Margaret R. Larson Professor of Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine; being named a Nebraska Pioneer; a UNMC Scientist Laureate; an NU Outstanding Research and Creativity Award winner; the 2013 UNMC Innovator of the Year; the 2014 Outstanding Faculty Mentor of Graduate Students; the Life Saver Award from the Nebraska Coalition for Lifesaving Cures; the Intellectual Property, Innovation and Commercialization Award; and the Pioneer in Neurovirology Award by the International Society for NeuroVirology. He is the current president of the Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology. The society granted him the Joseph Wybran, Herman Friedman, and Lifetime Service Awards. Dr. Gendelman was also named a J. William Fulbright Research Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. The humanitarian of the year award was bestowed on him by the Jewish Federation of Omaha. He received the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Research Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Career Research Award in Medicine from the Department of Internal Medicine, UNMC. He was the recipient of the Henry L. Moses Research Prize, Montefiore-AECOM, a Diplomat, American Board of Internal Medicine, and received the prestigious Leo M. Davidoff Society Award for Distinction in Medical Student Teaching from AECOM.   He enjoys a current Hirsch Index of 123, included amongst a selective scientific group listed on highly cited.com as one of the top-cited scientists in his field.

Lecture: Reaching an Effective Immunotherapy for Alzheimer’s Disease

Effective therapies that target the root cause for neurodegenerative diseases have not been achieved. Combinatorial immunotherapies were developed that improve neuronal integrity and ameliorate disease signs linked to associated pathologies were achieved. They require fully characterized models for theranostic tests. Each were realized in model systems tested by noninvasive bioimaging. Confirmation were made by neuropathology, neural communication, neuroimmunity, and pharmacologic testing. Each are operative for human translation. Human cross-relevant validations were explored for how Alzheimer’s disease immunotherapies can improve deficits in synaptic structures, function, neurotransmission; blood-brain barrier integrity, and neuroinflammation (both brain-infiltrating immunocytes and resident innate immune function). All were merged with studies of cognitive functions, oxidative and metabolic stress, and cellular senescence. Our newly developed humanized APP/PS1/Tau knock CRISPR mouse allowed translational studies of human immune responses during disease. The success of developmental immune-based therapeutics will be discussed.