Gerald Fischbach

Gerald D. Fischbach (born November 15, 1938) is an American neuroscientist.

Fischbach was also elected a member of Colgate University's Phi Beta Kappa chapter in 1960.

After graduating from Colgate University, Fischbach attended Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University, where he was a recipient of the New York State Medical Scholarship from 1962 to 1965 and the Polk Award for Undergraduate Research in 1965, before graduating with his M.D. that same year.

He received his M.D. from the Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University in 1965 before beginning his research career at the National Institutes of Health in 1966, where his research focused on the mechanisms of neuromuscular junctions.

After graduating medical school, Fischbach interned at the University of Washington hospital in Seattle, Washington before beginning his research career at the National Institutes of Health in 1966.

Fischbach is married to Ruth L. Fischbach, who currently serves as a Professor of Bioethics in Psychiatry at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.

They have four children.

Fischbach began his research career at the National Institutes of Health, where he served as a senior surgeon at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) before becoming a fellow at the National Institute of Child Health from 1966 to 1973.

Much of Fischbach's research concentrated on the mechanisms controlling action potentials and synapses, from which he pioneered the use of neuron and muscle cell culture to study neuromuscular junctions.

Fischbach used this technique to reconstruct neuromuscular junctions from dissociated spinal cord and muscle cells from chick embryos to show that functional synaptic connections reformed and were capable of sending spontaneous or induced action potentials.

However, cultures containing isolated spinal cord cells were unable to send similar action potentials.

This technique proved to be an important model for further studies to determine the essential mechanisms controlling neuromuscular junction development and maintenance.

Towards the end of his tenure at the National Institutes of Health, Fischbach began to search for motor neuron molecules responsible for regulating the number of acetylcholine receptors on postsynaptic cells.

After his tenure at the National Institutes of Health, Fischbach was a professor at Harvard University Medical School from 1972 to 1981 and from 1990 to 1998 and the Washington University School of Medicine from 1981 to 1990.

After his time at the National Institutes of Health, Fischbach obtained a position as an associate professor at Harvard Medical School's Department of Pharmacology in 1973.

Additionally, Fischbach received an honorary master's degree from Harvard University in 1978 and an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Colgate University in 2003.

By 1978 he obtained tenure and became a full professor, and continued teaching at Harvard University for the next three years.

After a nine-year stint at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, he returned to Harvard to serve as the Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology and Chairman of the Neurobiology Departments of both Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital from 1990 to 1998.

During his years as an associate professor, he researched the development of precursor muscle cells, specifically the development of acetylcholine receptors on embryonic chick pectoral muscles.

Later on he continued his research on ARIA that he started at the National Institutes of Health, specifically focusing on the expression of the protein's isoforms and their effects on tyrosine kinases.

This research project culminated in 1993 with the isolation of the ARIA (acetylcholine receptor inducing activity) protein, which is a member of the neuregulin family and is responsible for stimulating the production of acetylcholine receptors in postsynaptic muscle tissue.

In 1993, Fischbach was involved with the founding of the Mind, Brain, Behavior Institute.

This inter-disciplinary program aims to research the different structures, evolution, and development of the nervous system in order to better understand human behavior.

Gerald Fischbach spent nine years at the Washington University School of Medicine, where he served as the Edison Professor of Neurobiology and Head of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology.

During his time here, Fischbach continued his work on the ARIA protein.

When ARIA isolated from chick embryo brain was applied to chicken myotubes, which are developing chicken muscle fibers, it was shown to increase the rate of insertion of acetylcholine receptors into chicken myotube membranes.

This indicated ARIA could play a role in acetylcholine receptor insertion in neuromuscular junctions.

Additionally, it was demonstrated that ARIA stimulated the transcription of α acetylcholine receptor subunits leading to an increase in α subunit messenger RNA (mRNA) and precursors, but had no effect on the mRNA levels of the γ or δ acetylcholine receptor subunits.

This indicated that the amount α acetylcholine receptor subunit limits the synthesis and subsequent insertion of acetylcholine receptors into chicken myotube membranes.

In addition to his ARIA work, Fischbach also researched rapid desensitization of glutamate receptors in chicken spinal cord and rat hippocampal neurons.

Using focal ionophoresis and pressure injections to apply glutamate and other agonists including NMDA, AMPA, and kainate to different regions of the neurons, he noticed that certain hot spots were desensitized more rapidly that other sites on the neuron.

Fischbach and his collaborators hypothesized that these hot spots may be located at synapses between neurons, where clusters of glutamate receptors were present.

In 1998, he was named the director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke before becoming the Vice President and Dean of the Health and Biomedical Sciences, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Columbia University from 2001 to 2006.

Gerald Fischbach currently serves as the scientific director overseeing the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.

Throughout Fischbach's career, much of his research has focused on the formation and function of the neuromuscular junction, which stemmed from his innovative use of cell culture to study synaptic mechanisms.

Fischbach attended Colgate University in Hamilton, NY, where he was a four-year recipient of the New York State Regents Scholarship.

He graduated magna cum laude with high honors in mathematics receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics and Chemistry.

Fischbach returned to the NIH in 1998 when he was named director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a division of the NIH that supports research on the brain and nervous system.

While he was director, Fischbach oversaw a staff of more than 700 and an annual budget of about $800 million.

This money was used to support research by private and public organizations across the country as well as scientists working in labs at NINDS.