Serge Przedborski is the Page and William Black Professor of Neurology. He holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Neurology, Pathology and Cell Biology and is the Director of the Columbia Translational Neuroscience Initiative, the Co-Director of the Center for Motor Neuron Biology and Disease, the Vice-Chair of Neurology, and a faculty member of the graduate program in Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University. Dr. Przedborski attended medical school at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium, and did his internship and residency in Neurology and Psychiatry at the ULB-Erasme Academic Medical Center, Belgium. He obtained both his MD degree (1983) and then a PhD degree in neurological sciences (1991) from the ULB. He then did a fellowship in movement disorders with Dr. Stanley Fahn at Columbia University, where he became Assistant Professor in 1991.
The research conducted in Dr. Przedborski’s laboratory is geared toward unraveling the molecular basis of neurodegeneration and devising therapeutic strategies to hamper the processes that cause neuronal death, the source of many debilitating disorders. In keeping with this goal, to what extent and by which mechanisms do cell-autonomous and non-cell autonomous deleterious processes contribute to the demise of specific subpopulation of neurons in neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease represent a main line of research in his laboratory. These research efforts are supported by federal grants from both NIH and the DoD and by private agencies including the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, MDA, ALSA, Project-ALS, and P2ALS/Target-ALS. Dr. Przedborski is the current president of the World Parkinson Coalition, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to providing an international forum to learn about the latest scientific discoveries, medical practices, caregiver initiatives and advocacy work related to Parkinson’s disease.