Sam Gandy

Key takeaways

Sam Gandy belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sam Gandy to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sam Gandy from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Samuel E. Gandy, is a neurologist, cell biologist, Alzheimer's disease (AD) researcher and expert in the metabolism of the sticky substance called amyloid that clogs the brain in patients with Alzheimer's. His team discovered the first drugs that could lower the formation of amyloid. As of 2020, he is Mount Sinai Professor of Alzheimer's Disease Research, professor of neurology and psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, director, Center for Cognitive Health and NFL Neurological Center Mount Sinai Hospital, visiting principal research fellow, South Australia Health and Medical Research Institute in Adelaide, SA, Australia, and chairman emeritus of the National Medical and Scientific Advisory Council of the Alzheimer's Association. He was also founding director, Farber Institute for the Neurosciences.

Research Gandy has written more than 250 peer-reviewed papers, chapters and reviews on this topic. He has received continuous National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for his research on amyloid metabolism since 1986. He holds four patents that can be implemented to regulate key proteins, inhibiting Alzheimer-type amyloidosis and a diagnostic method for Alzheimer disease, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, dystonia ataxia, schizophrenia, epilepsy, brain tumors, brain irradiation, head trauma, and acute and chronic encephalitic and vascular disease. Gandy also studies brain imaging as a tool to confirm chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in retired athletes and war Veterans during their lifetimes.

Patents Use of phosphoprotein patterns for diagnosis of neurological and psychiatric disorders, (1989). Treatment of amyloidosis associated with Alzheimer disease, (1993). Method of screening for modulators of amyloid formation, (1994). Treatment of amyloidosis associated with Alzheimer disease using modulators of protein phosphorylation, (1995).

Grants Gandy worked on 36 research grants, 18 as principal investigator, since 1986. As of 2020, he works on nine active grants. Partial list of active grants in 2020:

Editorialships and boards As of 2020, Gandy is on the editorial boards of Neurodegenerative Diseases, Journal of Neuroinflammation and The Journal of Biological Chemistry. He is an associate editor at Alzheimer’s Disease and Associated Disorders and Journal of Neuroinflammation.

Publications Gandy has an h-index of 83 in 2020; a partial list of peer-reviewed publications include:

Gandy, Sam; DeKosky, Steven T. (29 September 2014). "[18F]-T807 tauopathy PET imaging in chronic traumatic encephalopathy". F1000Research. 3: 229. doi:10.12688/f1000research.5372.1. PMC 4240239. PMID 25469232. Wilde, Elisabeth A.; Bouix, Sylvain; Tate, David F.; Lin, Alexander P.; Newsome, Mary R.; Taylor, Brian A.; Stone, James R.; Montier, James; Gandy, Samuel E.; Biekman, Brian; Shenton, Martha E.; York, Gerald (8 September 2015). "Advanced neuroimaging applied to veterans and service personnel with traumatic brain injury: state of the art and potential benefits". Brain Imaging and Behavior. 9 (3): 367–402. doi:10.1007/s11682-015-9444-y. PMC 6547383. PMID 26350144. Gandy, Sam; Sano, Mary (3 November 2015). "Solanezumab—prospects for meaningful interventions in AD?". Nature Reviews Neurology. 11 (12): 669–670. doi:10.1038/nrneurol.2015.218. PMC 5959015. PMID 26526537. Hunsberger, Joshua G; Rao, Mahendra; Kurtzberg, Joanne; Bulte, Jeff W M; Atala, Anthony; LaFerla, Frank M; Greely, Henry T; Sawa, Akira; Gandy, Sam; Schneider, Lon S; Doraiswamy, P Murali (February 2016). "Accelerating stem cell trials for Alzheimer's disease". The Lancet Neurology. 15 (2): 219–230. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(15)00332-4. PMID 26704439. S2CID 5507852. Stoeckel, Luke E.; Arvanitakis, Zoe; Gandy, Sam; Small, Dana; Kahn, C. Ronald; Pascual-Leone, Alvaro; Pawlyk, Aaron; Sherwin, Robert; Smith, Philip (2 June 2016). "Complex mechanisms linking neurocognitive dysfunction to insulin resistance and other metabolic dysfunction". F1000Research. 5: 353. doi:10.12688/f1000research.8300.2. PMC 4897751. PMID 27303627. Sano, Mary; Gandy, Sam (12 April 2016). "Sex differences in cognition". Neurology. 86 (15): 1364–1365. doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000002573. PMID 26984948. S2CID 3021875. Martins, Ralph N.; Gandy, Sam (23 February 2016). "Increased dementia risk following androgen deprivation therapy?". Nature Reviews Urology. 13 (4): 188–189. doi:10.1038/nrurol.2016.34. PMID 26902342. S2CID 33888037. Pullman, M Y; Dickstein, D L; DeKosky, S T; Gandy, S (10 January 2017). "Antemortem biomarker support for a diagnosis of clinically probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy". Molecular Psychiatry. 22 (5): 638–639. doi:10.1038/mp.2016.236. PMC 5415635. PMID 28070125. Gandy, Sam; Bartfai, Tamas; Lees, Graham V.; Sano, Mary (3 April 2017). "Midlife interventions are critical in prevention, delay, or improvement of Alzheimer's disease and vascular cognitive impairment and dementia". F1000Research. 6: 413. doi:10.12688/f1000research.11140.1. PMC 5399952. PMID 28491285.

Biography Gandy received his MD and PhD at the Medical University of South Carolina. He did his postgraduate work at the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and Cornell University Medical College. Gandy completed his post-doctorate at Rockefeller University, where he was appointed assistant professor in the laboratory of Paul Greengard, 2000 Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Gandy was appointed associate professor of neurology and neurosciences at Cornell University Medical College in 1992. In 1997, he moved to New York University where he served as professor of psychiatry and cell biology until his appointment as Paul C. Brucker, M.D., Professor of Neuroscience at Jefferson Medical College and Director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences in 2001. In July 2007, he assumed his current post as Sinai Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is also a member of the Research Consortium of the Cure Alzheimer's Fund. In 2009, Gandy was featured with other prominent research scientists as one of GQ's "Rockstars of Science" and featured in the documentary film I Remember Better When I Paint that examines the phenomenon of how the creative arts awaken pathways to emotional parts of the brain.

References

External links When It Isn’t Really Senility, New York Times March 2009 The Future of Detecting Brain Damage in Football, The Atlantic September 2017

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sam Gandy

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sam Gandy claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sam Gandy before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sam Gandy ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sam Gandy

In research: Sam Gandy appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sam Gandy in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sam Gandy is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Alzheimer's disease researchers, American cell biologists, American neurologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sam Gandy outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Sam Gandy in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sam Gandy means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sam Gandy out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sam Gandy in simple terms?

Samuel E. Gandy, is a neurologist, cell biologist, Alzheimer's disease (AD) researcher and expert in the metabolism of the sticky substance called amyloid that clogs the brain in patients with Alzheimer's.

Why does Sam Gandy matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sam Gandy?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sam Gandy.