Jean Paul Vonsattel, MD is a board-certified neuropathologist and Director of the New York Brain Bank. He is a Professor of Pathology & Cell Biology at Columbia University Medical School.
Dr. Vonsattel is an expert in neuropathogy and brain banking. His career spans over 40 years and includes working first with The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center and then The New York Brain Bank at Columbia University, where has served as Director since 2001.
Dr. Vonsattel undertook the painstaking work to develop the best protocols to process, catalogue, and analyze brain tissue. For example, he established a method of preserving the dissected brain tissue in liquid nitrogen vapor following a uniform sampling protocol that has made all kinds of research in neurodegenerative disorders possible. His creation of a bar-code system has allowed efficient distribution of samples for research. These methods are considered the “gold-standard” and have been adopted by brain banks all over the world.
The NY Brain bank collection includes 5,000 generously donated specimens from patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
Select Publications
Louis ED, et al. Purkinje cell loss is a characteristic of essential tremor: towards a more mature understanding of pathogenesis. Parkinsonism Relat Disord. 2012 Sep;18(8):1003-4
Louis ED et al. Purkinje cell loss is a characteristic of essential tremor.Parkinsonism Relat Disord. 2011 Jul;17(6):406-9.
Kuo SH et al. Parallel fiber counts and parallel fiber integrated density are similar in essential tremor cases and controls. Acta Neuropathol. 2011
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