The Michael J. Fox Foundation Annual Report | Page 20

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HONORING A GIANT OF
PARKINSON’S RESEARCH
In April 2014, Todd Sherer and Michael J. Fox presented Heiko Braak,
MD, with the Robert A. Pritzker Prize for Leadership in Parkinson’s
Research. The award saluted his extraordinary scientific contributions,
which have transformed how the field thinks about the cause of
Parkinson’s and how we go after the cure. Braak — now senior
professor at Ulm University in Germany — outlined a Parkinson’s
staging system, which describes the regional distribution and
progression of alpha-synuclein clumps in the brain. The same year,
Braak theorized that the biological process of Parkinson’s may begin in
the peripheral nervous system before migrating to the brain. The prize
is made possible by Karen Pritzker and her husband, investor Michael
Vlock, and is named in honor of her late father, Robert A. Pritzker, an
industrialist, entrepreneur and philanthropist. The Pritzker Prize was
designed by renowned artist and Parkinson’s patient Tom Shannon,
and includes a $100,000 grant to advance the winner’s research in
neurodegenerative diseases.

THE MICHAEL J. FOX FOUNDATION
ANNUAL REPORT 2014