Merit Cudkowicz

Merit Cudkowicz is an American neurologist and neuroscientist who studies amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Cudkowicz is Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, director of the ALS clinic and the Neurological Clinical Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and chair of the Department of Neurology at MGH. Cudkowicz has led several large-scale collaborations and clinical trials to test novel treatments for ALS and as of 2020, researching ways to detect early biomarkers of ALS to improve diagnosis.

Early life Cudkowicz was born in Buffalo, New York. Her parents were both immunologists, her father a professor and her mother a research technician.

By the end of her undergraduate studies at MIT, Cudkowicz decided that she wanted to attend medical school instead of pursuing a Ph.D., so she stayed in Boston to take a medical degree at Harvard Medical School. During her time at Harvard, she also obtained a master's degree in clinical epidemiology through the Harvard School of Public Health.

After her medical degree, Cudkowicz completed her internship at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City and then returned to Boston to complete her neurology residency and fellowship at MGH.

Career During her residency, Cudkowicz decided to pursue clinical research centered around experimental therapeutics. NEALS began with the involvement of 9 academic clinical centers and has since expanded to almost 100 centers worldwide. Cudkowicz has since remained involved in the leadership of NEALS and is co-director of NEALS Clinical Trials Network.

After her residency training, Cudkowicz became a professor at Harvard Medical School. She is now Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, chief of the Neurology Service at MGH, co-director of the Neuromuscular Division at MGH, and director of the Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS at MGH, which she launched in 2019. Through this initiative, she launched the first ALS treatment discovery pipeline, the HEALEY ALS Platform Trial, which will promote expedited research for ALS. Cudkowicz partnered with Robert Brown, who discovered the link between SOD-1 and ALS, to develop methods to target this gene in patients with ALS. They developed SOD-1 antisense oligonucleotides which, when given to rats, extended their survival and reversed the loss of compound muscle action.

Cudkowicz has also led clinical trials for the use of ceftriaxone, an excitatory amino acid transporter, to minimize glutamate-mediated over-excitation as a treatment for ALS. Targeting over-excitability in an alternate way, Cudkowicz has been leading a trial to test the effects of Ezogabine, a potassium channel agonist, in phase II clinical trials.

In 2019, Cudkowicz started to test the efficacy of autologous bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of ALS. The results have paved the way for future trials and use of intrathecal autologous bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells administration. She found that infusion of autologous regulatory T cells in patients with ALS slowed the progression of the disease. Her findings supported findings that reported activation of glial cells in neural degeneration, and confirmed their presence in brain regions associated with ALS symptoms.

Awards and honors 1998 – Claflin Distinguished Scholar Award 2014 – Lou Gehrig Humanitarian Award 2017 – Forbes Norris Award from the International Alliance of ALS/MND Associations 2019 – Ray Adams Award, American Neurological Association