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Adjunct Faculty

Adjunct faculty typically have an academic or research appointment at another institution and contribute or collaborate with one or more School of Medicine faculty members or programs.

Adjunct rank details

Stuart Lipton, MD, PhD

Adjunct Professor of Neurology
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Titles

Adjunct Professor of Neurology

Biography

Neurologist/neuroscientist Stuart Lipton, MD, PhD is a renowned expert in dementia. He was trained at Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. In addition to running a basic-science laboratory, he has an active clinical neurology practice focusing on dementia and general neurology. Lipton completed his PhD thesis research with John Dowling at Harvard, followed by clinical residency and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard with Torsten Wiesel during the time that Wiesel won the Nobel prize. He was then on the Harvard faculty for over 20 years before moving to La Jolla as founding director of a new neuroscience center in 2000. He is best known for first describing the mechanism of action and contributing to the clinical development of the FDA-approved Alzheimer’s drug, memantine (Namenda®), and for discovering the posttranslational redox modification, protein S-nitrosylation.

Recently, Lipton combined memantine with S-nitrosylation chemistry to produce a new drug called NitroSynapsin, which displays disease-modifying activity in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease, both protecting synapses and improving neurobehavioral deficits. Lipton’s group also characterized HIV-related pathways to neuronal damage, discovered the NR3 (now known at GluN3) family of modulatory NMDA receptor subunits, characterized the molecular pathways for protecting neurons with Erythropoietin, and discovered the transcription factor MEF2C. His group showed that MEF2C activity is regulated by S-nitrosylation and serves as a master switch for neurogenesis from human neural stem cells. Dysregulated MEF2C is involved in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Autism-Spectrum Disorder, and Vascular dementia. Lipton was awarded the Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine and is an elected fellow of the AAAS. He recently received an Alzheimer’s Disease Association Award, a Michael J. Fox Foundation Grant, and an NIH Director’s Grant Award.

Last Updated on April 07, 2025.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

Research Fellow
Harvard Medical School, Dept. of Neurobiology (1983)
Board Certification
American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology, Neurology (1982)
Resident and Chief Resident in Neurology
Brigham & Women's Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children's Hospital (1981)
Intern in Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School (1978)
PhD
University of Pennsylvania, Biochemistry & Biophysics (1977)
MD
University of Pennsylvania, Biochemistry & Biophysics (1977)
BA
Cornell University, Neurobiology and Immunology (1971)

Research

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Stuart Lipton's published research.

Publications

2025

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Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

Activities

  • activity

    American Academy of Neurology

    07/01/2000 - PresentProfessional OrganizationsMember
  • activity

    American Neurological Association

    11/01/1987 - PresentProfessional OrganizationsMember
  • activity

    Society for Neuroscience

    10/09/2000 - 11/07/2008CommitteesMember

Honors

  • honor

    NIH Director's Grant Award

    04/01/2016National AwardNational Institutes of Health/NIDA
  • honor

    Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science

    09/09/2011National AwardAAAS, Neuroscience section
  • honor

    Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine

    05/08/2004International AwardErnst Jung Foundation
  • honor

    Alpha Omega Alpha

    06/04/1974National Award
  • honor

    Phi Beta Kappa

    06/10/1971National Award

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