Question:
Here's a link an article about one of the NPF's Medical Advisor's Dr. Alice Bendix Gottlieb: http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index...7950.xml&coll=1.
Mike
The long awaited article by the Newark Star Ledger finally was released. It is truely a history of a remarkable woman. As a dotocr and researcher you can read what she has accomplished but it does fall a little short of what a compassionite, caring individul she is.
I am pround that she is my doctor and that she has ask me to be part of Psoriasis Center of Excelence at Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center. A shinning example of what all physican should be when they put their patient first.
Mitch
THE STAR LEDGER
A neglected disease till patient's girl took charge
Thursday, September 22, 2005
BY KITTA MacPHERSON
Star-Ledger Staff
The psoriasis patient, his eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights spent scratching scaly red patches on his skin, looked at the alabaster complexion of his doctor with wonder.
"Why is your skin so ... clear?" he asked as he gazed upon Alice Bendix Gottlieb's face.
"I don't know. I'm lucky," the dermatologist told him. "But my mother has psoriasis, you know."
The plight of psoriasis patients is something Gottlieb intimately understands. Eva Schenk, 81, has suffered from the disease for as long as Gottlieb, her 52-year-old daughter, can remember.
Schenk's life has not been easy. She survived the Holocaust and endured the premature death of her husband. Then she faced her disease with stoicism, says Gottlieb, who vividly recalls the vestiges of her mother's illness scattered throughout the family's New York apartment:
The sunlamp that helped clear up lesions. The smell of tar that was smeared on sores and covered with plastic cling wrap. The bits of flaky skin that dusted the floor and furniture.
"I got interested in this because of what I saw my mother go through," said Gottlieb, a Metuchen resident who practices at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. "I wanted to help her. Now I want to make it go away for everyone who suffers from it."
Though psoriasis is seldom fatal, the 5 million Americans who live with it say it is agonizing and debilitating. It can degenerate into psoriatic arthritis, a painful inflammation that, left untreated, can deform joints and limbs.
A few patients die each year due to infections from sores that leave the skin cracked like dried riverbeds.
Yet, said Gottlieb, there is the perception that psoriasis is a minor disorder, which has resulted in less federal funding from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health.
She'd like to change that.
"My mother had a lousy life," Gottlieb said. "Yet she was so full of love for us. Even as a child, I knew that I was going to have to do something for her. She deserved it."
Since joining the faculty of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1995, Gottlieb has led drug companies, like a guide, to develop treatments that are socking psoriatic lesions into remission.
"She's a superstar," said Mark Lebwohl, chair of the department of dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "Many of the new drugs that have been developed would not exist were it not for her persistence in convincing the pharmaceutical industry that this was a disease worth treating."
MIXING MEDICINE
Gottlieb attended Rockefeller University and Cornell Medical College in New York, specializing in the immune system, a complex group of cells and organs that defend the body against infection and disease. She became an expert in disorders affecting skin and connective tissues.
By the time she joined UMDNJ, Gottlieb was a physician-researcher and was board-certified in dermatology and rheumatology.
She was perfectly positioned to leap into the field. And psoriasis, long a mystery to scientists, was ready to reveal some of its secrets.
Based on Gottlieb's pioneering work, scientists now believe the noncontagious disease is genetic. It erupts, they say, when faulty signals in the body's immune system prompt skin cells to regenerate too quickly, causing red, scaly lesions that can crack and bleed.
It is as if the immune response of psoriasis patients is too powerful.
A small group of scientists, including Gottlieb, long believed psoriasis involved the immune system. No one uncovered direct evidence, however, until one day in 1985, when Gottlieb, while staining sections of psoriatic plaque, noticed they contained a protein that she knew could exist only if a T cell were present.
T cells, the body's soldiers of fortune, either kick-start a protective immune reaction or target and destroy foreign cells. In the case of psoriasis, the T cells incorrectly tell the skin cells that they are damaged and need to replicate. This hyper-reproduction of new cells is what causes psoriasis plaque.
"What it told me was that the immune system was directly involved in psoriasis," she said. Gottlieb had found the smoking gun.
Treatment of psoriasis with older drugs like methotrexate and cyclosporine had proven effective, but such side effects as nausea and lethargy made them harsh remedies.
If researchers knew the specific agent starting the chain reaction, perhaps they could design "smarter" drugs to target specific immune responses and lessen side effects.
The insight resulted in a series of collaborations with drug companies, creating new medications known as biologics. These drugs are made from human or animal proteins and are genetically engineered to block psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis early.
"She really opened the field in terms of defining the work that identified the specific part of the immune system responsible for psoriasis," said Lebwohl of Mount Sinai. "It came out of her lab."
Her insights from basic research hit pay dirt in early 2001, when nurses in Gottlieb's clinic reported that a psoriasis patient taking a drug called Remicade for his Crohn's disease (an inflammatory bowel condition) experienced a near-miraculous remission of his lesions.
Later that year, Gottlieb and colleagues published a paper in the British medical journal Lancet showing Remicade corresponded with the disappearance of oozing plaques. When the patient stopped taking the medication, the lesions reappeared. The paper was one of the most-cited medical reports of the year.
Gottlieb's lab studies on Remicade were funded by a basic research grant from Johnson & Johnson of $219,000 over three years. She made her case by arguing that a drug to treat Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis also appeared effective against psoriasis.
"That's the power of clinical research," she said. "The work was not specifically project-related, but it brought a drug to the door of the FDA anyway."
Gottlieb went after its manufacturer, Centocor, a biotech firm in Pennsylvania.
"I hustled them. I said, 'This is absolutely dramatic. You've got to fund a study for it,'" she said. "I told them, 'I'm going to make you smile.'
"And indeed I did."
Remicade, also known as infliximab, now is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. It is widely prescribed as an "off-label" treatment for psoriasis -- a common and accepted medical practice. More than 600,000 patients have been treated with the drug, according to a spokesman for Centocor.
Late-stage trials for Centocor's Remicade confirm Gottlieb's earliest experiments. The company expects to submit data for governmental approval by year's end, which means it could reach market in as soon as 18 months.
Gottlieb also has had success with a number of other medications. Her research led to the approval of Amevive, also known as alefacept, a biologic approved by the FDA in January 2003 to treat moderate to severe psoriasis. The drug, made by Biogen IDEC, works by blocking T cells from functioning, interrupting the cell cycle that produces psoriasis.
She also oversaw some of the pivotal experimental trials on Raptiva, with the generic name efalizumab, approved by the FDA in October 2003 for treating moderate to severe psoriasis. The recombinant drug, made by Genentech, works by blocking the activation of T cells.
And in April 2004, Enbrel, a biologic made by Amgen & Wyeth that works like a sponge to sop up tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interrupting the inflammatory cycle of the disease, was approved by the FDA for treatment of moderate to severe psoriasis.
EARLY INSPIRATION
Gottlieb has been married 33 years to mathematician Allan Gottlieb and has two sons, David, 23, and Michael, 19.
The fact that she chose a career in medicine is hardly surprising. Her father, Gerhard Max Bendix, who died when she was just 11 weeks old, was a physician. Her maternal uncle, Ludwig Sternberger, was an immunologist who, like Gottlieb's mother, escaped Nazi Germany.
Gottlieb's interest in science started early. By the fifth grade she was devouring stories about "the vaccine guys" such as French microbiologist Louis Pasteur. She even dreamed of having a cure named after her.
"Alice was a very easy child, as long as you took her seriously," her mother says.
Gottlieb and her fraternal twin, Helen Bendix, were raised by their mother and grandmother, Emmie Sternberger. The girls did well in school, graduating at the top of their class.
Alice attended Bronx High School of Science; Helen went to Hunter College High School. They loved classical music and performed locally with their mother as the Bendix Trio. Alice played piano, Helen violin and Eva the cello.
Gottlieb and her sister -- now a Superior Court judge in Los Angeles -- saw their mother as a woman of quiet strength and inspiration.
Schenk spent most of her youth in the 1930s and early 1940s moving through Europe and then the Middle East, staying one step ahead of the Nazis. When she arrived in New York in May 1948, she had $100 in her pocket, and seven suitcases. Schenk wanted to be a physician -- or a musician -- but she first needed to support herself. So she found a low-rent furnished room and a job in the garment industry.
"I told my daughters what I had learned from my own experience," Schenk said. "The most important thing you have is knowledge -- education. You can lose almost everything. But no one can take that away from you, even if they hit you over the head."
Schenk said she has a feeling her disease motivated Gottlieb's research. "I can't say this for sure, because I have never asked her."
A year ago, Schenk's psoriasis deteriorated into psoriatic arthritis. The lifelong stoic finally cried from the pain. It took 90 minutes just to get out of bed in her New York City apartment.
Then her daughter gave her Enbrel, the new drug with one of the best safety profiles. Within months, Schenk had recovered about 80 percent of her flexibility, and she continues to improve.
She even has started playing the cello again.
"It's pretty strange that a medicine I helped develop has so profoundly affected my mother's life," Gottlieb said. "But it's perfect, don't you think?"
© 2005 The Star Ledger
© 2005 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.
Mike
Answers:
The long awaited article by the Newark Star Ledger finally was released. It is truely a history of a remarkable woman. As a dotocr and researcher you can read what she has accomplished but it does fall a little short of what a compassionite, caring individul she is.
I am pround that she is my doctor and that she has ask me to be part of Psoriasis Center of Excelence at Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center. A shinning example of what all physican should be when they put their patient first.
Mitch
Answers:
THE STAR LEDGER
A neglected disease till patient's girl took charge
Thursday, September 22, 2005
BY KITTA MacPHERSON
Star-Ledger Staff
The psoriasis patient, his eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights spent scratching scaly red patches on his skin, looked at the alabaster complexion of his doctor with wonder.
"Why is your skin so ... clear?" he asked as he gazed upon Alice Bendix Gottlieb's face.
"I don't know. I'm lucky," the dermatologist told him. "But my mother has psoriasis, you know."
The plight of psoriasis patients is something Gottlieb intimately understands. Eva Schenk, 81, has suffered from the disease for as long as Gottlieb, her 52-year-old daughter, can remember.
Schenk's life has not been easy. She survived the Holocaust and endured the premature death of her husband. Then she faced her disease with stoicism, says Gottlieb, who vividly recalls the vestiges of her mother's illness scattered throughout the family's New York apartment:
The sunlamp that helped clear up lesions. The smell of tar that was smeared on sores and covered with plastic cling wrap. The bits of flaky skin that dusted the floor and furniture.
"I got interested in this because of what I saw my mother go through," said Gottlieb, a Metuchen resident who practices at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. "I wanted to help her. Now I want to make it go away for everyone who suffers from it."
Though psoriasis is seldom fatal, the 5 million Americans who live with it say it is agonizing and debilitating. It can degenerate into psoriatic arthritis, a painful inflammation that, left untreated, can deform joints and limbs.
A few patients die each year due to infections from sores that leave the skin cracked like dried riverbeds.
Yet, said Gottlieb, there is the perception that psoriasis is a minor disorder, which has resulted in less federal funding from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health.
She'd like to change that.
"My mother had a lousy life," Gottlieb said. "Yet she was so full of love for us. Even as a child, I knew that I was going to have to do something for her. She deserved it."
Since joining the faculty of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1995, Gottlieb has led drug companies, like a guide, to develop treatments that are socking psoriatic lesions into remission.
"She's a superstar," said Mark Lebwohl, chair of the department of dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "Many of the new drugs that have been developed would not exist were it not for her persistence in convincing the pharmaceutical industry that this was a disease worth treating."
MIXING MEDICINE
Gottlieb attended Rockefeller University and Cornell Medical College in New York, specializing in the immune system, a complex group of cells and organs that defend the body against infection and disease. She became an expert in disorders affecting skin and connective tissues.
By the time she joined UMDNJ, Gottlieb was a physician-researcher and was board-certified in dermatology and rheumatology.
She was perfectly positioned to leap into the field. And psoriasis, long a mystery to scientists, was ready to reveal some of its secrets.
Based on Gottlieb's pioneering work, scientists now believe the noncontagious disease is genetic. It erupts, they say, when faulty signals in the body's immune system prompt skin cells to regenerate too quickly, causing red, scaly lesions that can crack and bleed.
It is as if the immune response of psoriasis patients is too powerful.
A small group of scientists, including Gottlieb, long believed psoriasis involved the immune system. No one uncovered direct evidence, however, until one day in 1985, when Gottlieb, while staining sections of psoriatic plaque, noticed they contained a protein that she knew could exist only if a T cell were present.
T cells, the body's soldiers of fortune, either kick-start a protective immune reaction or target and destroy foreign cells. In the case of psoriasis, the T cells incorrectly tell the skin cells that they are damaged and need to replicate. This hyper-reproduction of new cells is what causes psoriasis plaque.
"What it told me was that the immune system was directly involved in psoriasis," she said. Gottlieb had found the smoking gun.
Treatment of psoriasis with older drugs like methotrexate and cyclosporine had proven effective, but such side effects as nausea and lethargy made them harsh remedies.
If researchers knew the specific agent starting the chain reaction, perhaps they could design "smarter" drugs to target specific immune responses and lessen side effects.
The insight resulted in a series of collaborations with drug companies, creating new medications known as biologics. These drugs are made from human or animal proteins and are genetically engineered to block psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis early.
"She really opened the field in terms of defining the work that identified the specific part of the immune system responsible for psoriasis," said Lebwohl of Mount Sinai. "It came out of her lab."
Her insights from basic research hit pay dirt in early 2001, when nurses in Gottlieb's clinic reported that a psoriasis patient taking a drug called Remicade for his Crohn's disease (an inflammatory bowel condition) experienced a near-miraculous remission of his lesions.
Later that year, Gottlieb and colleagues published a paper in the British medical journal Lancet showing Remicade corresponded with the disappearance of oozing plaques. When the patient stopped taking the medication, the lesions reappeared. The paper was one of the most-cited medical reports of the year.
Gottlieb's lab studies on Remicade were funded by a basic research grant from Johnson & Johnson of $219,000 over three years. She made her case by arguing that a drug to treat Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis also appeared effective against psoriasis.
"That's the power of clinical research," she said. "The work was not specifically project-related, but it brought a drug to the door of the FDA anyway."
Gottlieb went after its manufacturer, Centocor, a biotech firm in Pennsylvania.
"I hustled them. I said, 'This is absolutely dramatic. You've got to fund a study for it,'" she said. "I told them, 'I'm going to make you smile.'
"And indeed I did."
Remicade, also known as infliximab, now is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. It is widely prescribed as an "off-label" treatment for psoriasis -- a common and accepted medical practice. More than 600,000 patients have been treated with the drug, according to a spokesman for Centocor.
Late-stage trials for Centocor's Remicade confirm Gottlieb's earliest experiments. The company expects to submit data for governmental approval by year's end, which means it could reach market in as soon as 18 months.
Gottlieb also has had success with a number of other medications. Her research led to the approval of Amevive, also known as alefacept, a biologic approved by the FDA in January 2003 to treat moderate to severe psoriasis. The drug, made by Biogen IDEC, works by blocking T cells from functioning, interrupting the cell cycle that produces psoriasis.
She also oversaw some of the pivotal experimental trials on Raptiva, with the generic name efalizumab, approved by the FDA in October 2003 for treating moderate to severe psoriasis. The recombinant drug, made by Genentech, works by blocking the activation of T cells.
And in April 2004, Enbrel, a biologic made by Amgen & Wyeth that works like a sponge to sop up tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interrupting the inflammatory cycle of the disease, was approved by the FDA for treatment of moderate to severe psoriasis.
EARLY INSPIRATION
Gottlieb has been married 33 years to mathematician Allan Gottlieb and has two sons, David, 23, and Michael, 19.
The fact that she chose a career in medicine is hardly surprising. Her father, Gerhard Max Bendix, who died when she was just 11 weeks old, was a physician. Her maternal uncle, Ludwig Sternberger, was an immunologist who, like Gottlieb's mother, escaped Nazi Germany.
Gottlieb's interest in science started early. By the fifth grade she was devouring stories about "the vaccine guys" such as French microbiologist Louis Pasteur. She even dreamed of having a cure named after her.
"Alice was a very easy child, as long as you took her seriously," her mother says.
Gottlieb and her fraternal twin, Helen Bendix, were raised by their mother and grandmother, Emmie Sternberger. The girls did well in school, graduating at the top of their class.
Alice attended Bronx High School of Science; Helen went to Hunter College High School. They loved classical music and performed locally with their mother as the Bendix Trio. Alice played piano, Helen violin and Eva the cello.
Gottlieb and her sister -- now a Superior Court judge in Los Angeles -- saw their mother as a woman of quiet strength and inspiration.
Schenk spent most of her youth in the 1930s and early 1940s moving through Europe and then the Middle East, staying one step ahead of the Nazis. When she arrived in New York in May 1948, she had $100 in her pocket, and seven suitcases. Schenk wanted to be a physician -- or a musician -- but she first needed to support herself. So she found a low-rent furnished room and a job in the garment industry.
"I told my daughters what I had learned from my own experience," Schenk said. "The most important thing you have is knowledge -- education. You can lose almost everything. But no one can take that away from you, even if they hit you over the head."
Schenk said she has a feeling her disease motivated Gottlieb's research. "I can't say this for sure, because I have never asked her."
A year ago, Schenk's psoriasis deteriorated into psoriatic arthritis. The lifelong stoic finally cried from the pain. It took 90 minutes just to get out of bed in her New York City apartment.
Then her daughter gave her Enbrel, the new drug with one of the best safety profiles. Within months, Schenk had recovered about 80 percent of her flexibility, and she continues to improve.
She even has started playing the cello again.
"It's pretty strange that a medicine I helped develop has so profoundly affected my mother's life," Gottlieb said. "But it's perfect, don't you think?"
© 2005 The Star Ledger
© 2005 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.
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