M. Flint Beal, M.D.

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Biography

M. Flint Beal, MD is an internationally recognized authority on neurodegenerative disorders. He is the Anne Parrish Titzell Professor and Director of the Neurology service at the NewYork-Presbyterian Cornell Campus. Dr. Beal received his medical degree from the University of Virginia in 1976 and did his internship and first year residency in Medicine at New York-Cornell before completing his residency in Neurology at The Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined the neurology faculty at Harvard in 1983. Dr. Beal was Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Neurochemistry laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital before moving to Cornell. Dr. Beal's research has focused on the mechanism of neuronal degeneration in Alzheimer's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Parkinson's Disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Dr. Beal is the author or co-author of more than 400 scientific articles and more than 125 books, book chapters and reviews. He serves on the editorial boards of seven journals, the Journal of Neurochemistry, the Annals of Neurology, Journal of Molecular Neuroscience, Experimental Neurology and Neurobiology of Disease. Dr. Beal's research has focused on the mechanism of neuronal degeneration in Alzheimer's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Parkinson's Disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He has also been working on the development of novel neurochemical assays for assessing oxidative damage for use in clinical trials of new therapies for these disorders, as well as metabolomics for diagnosis.

Dr. Beal is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honorary Society and received the Derek Denny-Brown Neurological Scholar Award of the American Neurological Association. He has served on the Council and as Vice President of the American Neurological Association and on the Science Advisory Committees of the Hereditary Disease Foundation, Huntington's Disease Society of America, Parkinson's Disease Study Group, Parkinson' Disease Foundation, Bachman-Strauss Foundation, The ALS Association, and the American Health Assistance Foundation. Dr. Beal is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the Namtional Academy of Sciences.

Selected Recent Papers (downloadable in Adobe Acrobat format*):

Energetics in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases

Mitochondrial DNA mutations in complex I and tRNA genes in Parkinson's disease

Neuroprotective Effects of Creatine in a Transgenic Mouse Model of Huntington's Disease

Mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress in neurodegenerative diseases. Nature 2006;443:787-795

Therapeutic effects of coenzyme Q10 and reduced COQ10 in the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1, 2, 3, 6-tetrahydropyridine model of Parkinsonism.  J Neurochem 2008; 104:1613-1621

Metabolomic profiling to develop blood biomarkers for Parkinson's disease. Brain. 2008;131:389-96.

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