Sam Gandy

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Sam E. Gandy is a neurologist, cell biologist, and Alzheimer’s disease researcher who studies amyloid, the sticky protein that can form plaques in the brain. His team helped develop some of the first drugs designed to lower the formation of amyloid.

As of 2020, Gandy holds multiple roles: Mount Sinai Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research and professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York; director of the Center for Cognitive Health and the NFL Neurological Center at Mount Sinai Hospital; visiting principal research fellow at the South Australia Health and Medical Research Institute in Adelaide; and chairman emeritus of the Alzheimer’s Association’s National Medical and Scientific Advisory Council. He was also the founding director of the Farber Institute for the Neurosciences.

Gandy has written more than 250 scholarly articles and reviews and has received continuous NIH funding for his amyloid research since 1986. He holds four patents related to regulating proteins to inhibit Alzheimer-like amyloidosis and to diagnostic methods for Alzheimer’s and several other brain diseases. He also studies brain imaging to detect chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in retired athletes and war veterans.

Throughout his career, Gandy has worked on many research grants and currently contributes to several active projects. He serves on editorial boards for several journals and is an associate editor for Alzheimer’s Disease and Associated Disorders and Journal of Neuroinflammation.

Education and career path: He earned an MD and PhD from the Medical University of South Carolina and did postgraduate work at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Cornell University Medical College. He completed a postdoctoral stint at Rockefeller University with Paul Greengard, a Nobel Prize winner. He was an associate professor of neurology and neurosciences at Cornell in 1992, then moved to New York University in 1997 as a professor of psychiatry and cell biology. In 2001 he joined Jefferson Medical College as the Paul C. Brucker Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences, and in 2007 he became Sinai Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research at Mount Sinai.

Gandy has been recognized publicly for his science, including being named one of GQ’s “Rockstars of Science” in 2009 and appearing in the documentary I Remember Better When I Paint.