Macklis, Jeffrey

DR. JEFFREY MACKLIS is the director of the Massachusetts General Hospital—Harvard Medical School Center for Nervous System Repair, and is the program head of neuroscience/nervous system diseases at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute at Harvard University. His laboratory at the Division of Medical Sciences at Harvard University has the long—term goal of working on ways of helping with brain and spinal cord repair. Specifically, this involves cellular repair of injured or degenerated complex cerebral cortex and also cortical output circuitry. By its very nature, this involves dealing with motor neuron problems and diseases, working out ways of dealing with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and multiple sclerosis, as well as spinal cord injury.

Before moving to Harvard, Macklis attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), completing his bachelor's of science thesis at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1979, before going to the graduate school at MIT, studying within the Harvard—MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Macklis gained his medical degree with honors from Harvard University Medical School in 1983; his thesis was on noninvasive laser lesioning of dye—targeted mammalian neurons. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral student in developmental neuroscience with Richard Sidman at Harvard Medical School. In 1986, he was living at Phoe—nixville, Pennsylvania

Macklis has an interest in both medicine and science. He trained clinically in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and in adult neurology in the Harvard—Longwood Neurological Training Program. He was also working in the Basic Science Division of Neuroscience at Children's Hospital Boston until 2003, when he moved to Massachusetts General Hospital to establish the Massachusetts General Hospital—Harvard Medical School Center for Nervous System Repair. He has been director of this center since then.

Altogether, Macklis has been the author or coauthor of 60 papers, including eight as the lead author, and has been sole author of two papers. These two papers were: “Transplanted Neocorti—cal Neurons Migrate Selectively into Regions of Neuronal Degeneration Produced by Chromo—phore—Targeted Laser Photolysis,” published in the Journal of Neuroscience in September 1993, and “Neurobiology: New Memories from New Neurons,” published in Nature on March 15, 2001.

[Page 308]Macklis's laboratory continues to study precursor biology and the molecular development of the key cortical neuron lineages, including the corticospinal motor neurons. Initial results have been promising, with experiments indicating that signals directing neuronal migration and specific differentiation of immature neurons and from cortical stem cells can be reexpressed in adult mammals. Macklis is always very realistic about translating these exciting findings to the clinic, but his work may one day open up the possibility of finding treatments for a number of degenerative diseases of the brain.