Karolinska Gold Medal awarded to US scientist
Coinciding with the 200 year anniversary of the founding of Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, the American Nobel Prize laureate Paul Greengard is being awarded the institute's Gold Medal for his research into neurological and mental diseases.

During more than 40 years of collaboration with Karolinska Institutet, Greengard's has revealed mechanisms behind these illnesses by showing how brain cells communicate and also how this communication can be altered. This research has in helped to develop pharmaceuticals and treatments for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and depression.

Head of the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at The Rockefeller University in New York, Greengard received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000. His research discovered that signaling between nerve cells of the brain occurs through a chemical reaction called protein phosphorylation that involves the addition and removal of phosphate groups from proteins and evokes changes in the form and function of the proteins.

"It is impossible to overstate his importance," says Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson, President of Karolinska Institutet. The Gold Medal will be presented in late September at Karolinska Institutet's Bicentenary ceremony at the residence of the Swedish ambassador to the US in Washington, DC.

Source: Karolinska Institutet | www.ki.se

More on the KI bicentennial: http://www.nordstjernan.com/news/educationresearch/2007/