St. John's Professor Receives $900,000 Research Grant
Simon Moller, Ph.D., Professor of Biological
Sciences in St. John's College of
Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a $900,000 research
grant from
The Research Council of Norway.
The grant supports Dr. Moller's research on mechanisms involved in
the onset of
Parkinson's Disease. By identifying those molecular and
cellular triggers, the research may lead to earlier diagnoses and
new forms of treatment. Those stricken with the illness suffer from
tremors and other motor difficulties that gradually worsen.
Dr. Moller has researched Parkinson's Disease for many years. He
founded the Centre for Organelle Research in Norway, and serves as
a part-time professor at the Norwegian Centre for Movement
Disorders at Stavanger
University Hospital. While there, Dr. Moller gained a real
sense of the way patients suffer from the illness. “I was amazed by
how poor their quality of life can be,” he said. “And it seemed
like there was very little that could be done to help them.”
The experience sparked Dr. Moller’s determination to find more
effective ways of diagnosing and treating the illness. Parkinson’s
is a degenerative disorder affecting neurons that enable the brain
to generate body movements. When those cells die, patients suffer
from tremors, rigidity and diminished spontaneous movement, which
may become debilitating.
“The methods for diagnosing and treating the disease have
progressed very little since the seventies,” said Dr. Moller.
Unlike cancer, Parkinson’s is rarely if ever identified through
blood tests. “By the time a case is diagnosed,” Dr. Moller added,
“much of the damage is done.”
Through his research, Dr. Moller hopes to uncover “early stage
biomarkers. If you can diagnose Parkinson’s in the early stages,
you can open up a whole new field of drugs.”
Plants, Dr. Moller explained, are “an excellent model” for research
because they possess all but one of the genes that cause
Parkinson's in humans. His work also incorporates use of zebra fish
and mammalian neurons. “We've merged these three models, which I
think makes for a more powerful approach to reaching some answers,”
he said.
The grant Dr. Moller has received will allow the Department of
Biological Sciences to employ four postdoctoral researchers,
underwrite the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment and create
more opportunities for research-based education.
A Shared Desire to “Build
Something”
Born and raised in Norway, Dr. Moller attended college and graduate
school in the United Kingdom. He earned his bachelor’s degree in
biotechnology at the University of Leeds and his master’s degree in
biotechnology and engineering at Imperial College London. He
returned to the University of Leeds for his Ph.D. in
biotechnology.
Dr. Moller taught and conducted research at Rockefeller University,
NY; the University of Leicester, UK; and the University of
Stavanger, Norway. Interested in returning to the United States, he
learned about the research conducted at St. John's. “I’d heard good
things about the University, so I contacted the chair of the
Biological Sciences department and asked if I could give a
seminar.” Later, Jeffrey Fagen, Ph.D., Dean of St. John's College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences, invited him to join the department’s
faculty.
”There's something about the people at St. John’s,” Dr. Moller
said. “They all want to build something, and part of my job is to
use my expertise to help accomplish that. I founded an
internationally recognized research institute from the ground up in
four years. I want to do something similar here.”
Fostering that enthusiasm requires superb teaching — in the
laboratory as well as the classroom. “We cannot separate teaching
from research,” said Dr. Moller. “Students are becoming cleverer
all the time. They don’t want to just learn things in a textbook.
They want to work in the lab, to go above and beyond.”
Knowing this, he added, faculty “have to be enthusiastic and live
the science — to convey the excitement of science directly to
today’s students.” That is the kind of enthusiasm he finds at St.
John’s. “Our students are ambassadors for our program. They will go
out and say they received a great education here.”