Moussa B. H. Youdim (Hebrew: מוסא ב.ה. יודעים, Persian: موسى ب. ح. یودعیم; born, February 28, 1940) is an Israeli neuroscientist specializing in neurochemistry and neuropharmacology. He is the discoverer of both monoamine oxidase (MAO) B inhibitors l-deprenyl (Selegiline) and rasagiline (Azilect) used as anti-Parkinson drugs which possess neuroprotective activities. He is currently professor emeritus at Technion - Faculty of Medicine and President of Youdim Pharmaceuticals. He was awarded the EMET Prize for Brain Sciences in 2010 and the Israel Prize in Life Sciences in 2022.
Early life Youdim was born on February 28, 1940, in Tehran, Iran, the son of Farangiss Lahijani and Eliahoo Youdim, a businessman. He attended Jewish school in Teheran and in 1952 he left Iran to study in a Jewish school in Brighton, England.
University education He earned a B.Sc degree in biochemistry in 1972 from McGill University in Montreal. In 1964 he received his masters degree in the laboratory of Professor Theodore Sourkes at McGill University's Biochemistry Department and Psychiatry Department at Allan Memorial Institute. In his master's thesis he studied the effect of heat, inhibitors and riboflavin deficiency on mitochondrial monoamine oxidase in liver and brain and identified two forms of monoamine oxidases. For his doctoral research in the same lab the topic was the purification and characterization of mitochondrial membrane bound monoamine oxidase in the liver and brain, being one of the first to do so receiving his PhD from McGill University in 1966. His postdoctoral research 1966-1971 was with Prof. Merton Sandler at London University Post Graduate School at Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital, London and continued his research on brain monoamine oxidases. He, Merton Sandler and Edda Hannington of the Wellcome Trust established the defect in metabolism of dietary food stuff such as cheese and chocolate containing tyramine and phenylethylamine in initiating migraine headache in susceptible subjects. They received the Gold Medal of British Migraine Association in 1974. He spent a year in K.F. Tipton’s laboratory, in the department of biochemistry, University of Cambridge. In 1972 he received a Wellcome Trust Travelling Fellowship to be at College de France in Paris in Jaques Glowinski's department.
Academic career From 1973 to 1977 he was a senior research associate in MRC Unit and department of clinical pharmacology at the faculty of medicine, University of Oxford. At Oxford he pioneered research on the effect of nutritional iron deficiency on cognition and learning in rats and how it affects the brain dopmaine neurotransmission system, confirming learning disabilities observed in children with nutritional iron deficiency. He continued to study the neurophamacology of monoamine oixdase A and B and he also pioneered the first use of monoamine oxidase B inhibitor l-deprenyl (later named selegiline),a failed antidepressant developed by Hungarian drug company, Chinoin, as anti-Parkinson drug with Prof. Peter Reiderer and Walter Birkmeyer. In 1977 he moved to Israel to establish the Pharmacology Department at the fledgling faculty of medicine of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which was three years old at the time. He was chairman of the department from 1977 until 1994. There he continued the work he had started on the dysregulation of brain iron metabolism, function and behavior. Together with Peter Reiderer they identified accumulation of iron in the dopamine neurons of substantia nigra pars compacta of Parkinsonian brains and role of iron initiated oxidative stress induced neurodegeneration. He went on to show that iron chelators such as desferal that came to him acted as neuroprotective drugs in 6-hydoxydopamine and MPTP animal moldes of Parkinson's disease. He identified a drug, AGN1135, that he received from Aspro Nicholas Company in 1968, while he was in Merton Sandler's department , as second potent selective irreversible monoamine oxidase B inhibitor. With John Finberg and Teva Pharmaceutical company they developed the R-isomer of AGN1135 as treatment for Parkinson's disease, the second monoamine oxidase B inhibitor, rasagiline (Azilect). First as initial mono therapy or as add-on therapy to levodopa or dopamine 2 receptor agonists later in the disease. Results of the ADAGIO clinical study suggest that the drug may have a positive impact on slowing clinical progression of the disease. Youdim's research priorities are in neurosciences, pharmacology, neurotransmitter systems, and neurological diseases, specifically Parkinson’s disease. His primary research is on the monoamine oxidase enzyme and its role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease and the development of selective inhibitors of this enzyme. Medications developed to inhibit monoamine oxidase B have since become an established method of treating Parkinson’s disease. He also conducts research on other neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, focusing on the disruption in cholinergic neurotransmission associated with this disease. He also pioneered the concept and developedment novel multi target iron chelators with monoamine oxidase and cholinesterase inhibitory activities for treatment of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig disease).These drugs possess neuroprotective and neurorestorative activities in several animal models of Parkinson's disease.These drugs activate hypoxia inducing factor (HIF) that induces the increase of neurotophins BDNF,GNFD,VEGF in the brain which activate the cell cycle in differentiation of dopamine neurons . He has been a Distinguished Scientific Professor in universities and institutes around the world including;
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