Upon Mr. Orgell’s death, the Trustees elected to their membership Albert A. Dorman, chairman and chief executive officer of AECOM Technology Corporation. In 2004, Mr. Brawerman became Trustee Emeritus, and Andrew S. Garb, a southern California attorney who had served as legal counsel to the trust for 23 years, assumed the duties of Trustee.
Mr. Gladstone’s entrepreneurial, visionary, and pioneering spirit inspire our efforts to fulfill his dream of contributing to the health and welfare of all people through medical research.
The Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease Becomes a Reality
In 1972, the Trustees began considering how to establish a world-renowned medical research organization. Their vision was to create the Gladstone Laboratories that would contribute to the health and well-being of humankind by supporting talented and productive scientists. The Trustees set forth to find a home for Gladstone and a Director.
After much searching, the Trustees selected UCSF as the site for establishing the Gladstone Laboratories and in 1978 invited Robert W. Mahley, M.D., Ph.D., to become the founding director. At the invitation of Donald S. Fredrickson, M.D., Dr. Mahley had moved to the NIH in 1971 after completing the M.D.-Ph.D. program and a pathology internship at Vanderbilt University and ultimately became the head of the Comparative Atherosclerosis and Arterial Wall Metabolism Section at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Dr. Mahley recruited his entire group at the NIH to become part of the new institute.
By the end of 1980 (the first full year of operation), Gladstone scientists had published 20 manuscripts. By 1999 the number had increased to 750. The original group of six investigators had grown to 12. The investment made by the Gladstone Trustees in establishing a medical research organization has been rewarded by the quality of the Gladstone science that has contributed to understanding the basic mechanisms of atherogenesis. This understanding has led to effective therapies for coronary heart disease and has also opened new avenues of investigation into the causes of and treatments for atherosclerotic vascular disease, which remains the nation’s leading killer.
The Model Expands with the Creation of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology
In 1990, after more than 10 years of successful operation of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, the Trustees decided that the Gladstone model should be replicated with the creation of a second institute. After reviewing several fields of research and consulting with various advisors, Dr. Mahley prepared a position paper for the Trustees indicating that the fields of neurobiology or infectious disease would profit from the Gladstone basic science approach to the biomedical research problems being faced by these areas of research.
At about this same time, UCSF had embarked on a project to establish a major basic science effort in the area of HIV and AIDS research to be housed at SFGH. State legislators and the Governor supported the concept of developing an AIDS Research Center to serve the citizens of California. This premier center, with state-of-the-art laboratories, would be dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of the AIDS virus. Gladstone and UCSF entered into a partnership to establish the best HIV/AIDS research center in the country.
After an exhaustive search, the Gladstone-UCSF Search Committee identified Warner C. Greene, M.D., Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and a Professor of Medicine at Duke University, as the Director. Dr. Greene had earned his M.D. and Ph.D. at Washington University (1977), received house staff training in medicine at Harvard, and launched a successful research career at the NIH.
Dr. Greene began the new Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology in 1992, and it was dedicated on April 19, 1993. We mark that date with a quote from Dr. Greene that set the stage for the Institute. ’Today the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology formally joins the battle against HIV and AIDS. I have great hope that our basic studies will help solve the puzzle of AIDS, revealing new ways to halt the growth of this virus and to help develop new anti-AIDS therapies.’ Julius Krevans, then UCSF Chancellor, praised the Institute saying that the ’partnership between The J. David Gladstone Institutes, UC San Francisco, the City of San Francisco, and the State of California is unique in the world of AIDS research. The collaboration of public and private enterprise working to defeat the epidemic of this century is without parallel in the United States.’
A Third Gladstone Institute Dedicated to Unraveling the Pathogenesis of Major Neurological Diseases
In 1998 Gladstone dedicated its third institute, the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and established Lennart Mucke, M.D., as the Director. The origin of our interest in neuroscience derives from a series of key observations made by Gladstone investigators in the mid-1980s. Apolipoprotein (apo) E, a major focus of the research at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, was found to be produced in abundance in the brain and was identified as the major apolipoprotein produced within the central nervous system. By 1990, Gladstone investigators had shown that apoE stimulated neurite outgrowth in cultured neurons. These observations on apoE neurobiology laid the foundation for the explosion of research on this protein that followed the identification of apoE4 as the major genetic risk factor for the most common form of Alzheimer’s disease by investigators at Duke University.
Based on these exciting developments, the decision was made in 1995 to substantially expand neuroscientific research efforts at Gladstone. The Gladstone Molecular Neurobiology Program was created as a joint venture of the Gladstone Institutes and the UCSF Department of Neurology, and a Gladstone/UCSF search committee identified Dr. Mucke to lead this program. Dr. Mucke’s recruitment to Gladstone marked a new level of cooperation and partnership between UCSF and Gladstone.
Dr. Mucke received his early training in medicine and neuroscience at the Free University of Berlin as well as at the Georg-August-University and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. After clinical training in internal medicine and neurology at the Cleveland Clinic, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neurovirology at The Scripps Research Institute. As a faculty member of The Scripps Research Institute, Dr. Mucke established a productive research program focusing on the pathogenesis of neurological diseases between 1990 and 1995. He joined the Gladstone Institutes in 1996.
As director of the new Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, Dr. Mucke has established fruitful links between Gladstone’s vast experience in the pathobiology of apoE, his own expertise in the analysis of amyloid proteins and other factors related to Alzheimer’s disease, and various neuroscience laboratories at UCSF. Productive interactions among the three Gladstone Institutes are also expected in the areas of cerebrovascular disease and HIV-associated neurological impairments.
