Tony Lambert delphine1939£videotron.ca

1 février 2007

DALLAS — Jan. 26, 2007 — Dr. Richard D. King, a new assistant professor of neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, has been awarded a prestigious grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program.

The four-year, $416,560 fellowship, intended to support physicians from disadvantaged backgrounds, is given to doctors who have finished their clinical training and plan to do at least four years of specialized research.

Dr. King’s research focuses on using a mathematical technique called fractal analysis to measure atrophy of the brain. Such measurements could prove to be useful for diagnosing or tracking progressive dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease.

With current technologies, health-care providers can measure the thickness of the brain’s outer layer and the volume of parts of the brain using magnetic resonance imaging, but they lack effective ways of measuring changes in the brain’s shape.

"We really don’t have a good, clinically useful way to quantify changes in the shape of the brain," Dr. King said. "Such shape changes, we think, can be related to changes in function and can precede losses of function, so they might tell us who is at risk of losing function.

"Also, if we have medication that can help maintain function, we would know which patients could benefit from those medications."

Dr. King, a native of Houston, earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Texas A&M University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine. He completed a residency in neurology at Harvard Medical School, then a fellowship at UT Dallas.

In addition to his own research, Dr. King will lead UT Southwestern’s efforts in the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, a five-year nationwide study to track brain degeneration in people with the disease. He will also have a joint appointment with UT Dallas for teaching and other duties.

The fellowship program, instituted in 1983, was originally geared toward minority researchers, but was later expanded to include those who face challenges because of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or other factors. It was recently renamed in honor of Dr. Harold Amos, the first African-American to chair a department at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. King is the sixth researcher affiliated with UT Southwestern to win this fellowship grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Other winners (and the years grants were received): Dr. Ohwofiemu Nwariaku, associate professor of surgery (2002); former faculty members Dr. Edsel Arce-Hernandez (1999), Dr. Carmela Morales (1996) and Dr. Ivor Benjamin (1985); and former fellow Dr. David Wilkes (1992).