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Dr.
A. Claudio Cuello, M.D., D.Sc., FRSC
Dr. Claudio Cuello is the Charles E. Frosst/Merck
Chair in Pharmacology and past Head of the Department of
Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University,
Montreal, Canada. He leads a research team working on the
multidisciplinary aspects of brain repair, brain aging and
cellular and molecular neuropathology of Alzheimer’s
disease. Dr Cuello is an author of more than 300 peer
reviewed scientific publications, edited several books in
his field and is on the editorial boards of numerous
journals in the Neurosciences. He is a past Staff Scientist
of the Cambridge MRC-NCP Unit and past Professor in
Neuropharmacology at Oxford University. Dr. Cuello graduated
in Medicine in 1965 from the University of Buenos Aires,
Argentina and in 1986 was granted a D.Sc degree by Oxford
University for outstanding contributions to Neuroscience. He
has been named Honorary Professor at the School of
Biochemistry and Pharmacy, Buenos Aires University and
received an Honorary Doctorate in Sciences from the
University of Ceara, Brazil and an Honorary Doctorate in
Medicine from Kuopio University, Finland. He has been
elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has
received the Novartis Senior Award of the Pharmacological
Society of Canada, the H. Lehman Award from the Canadian
College of NeuroPsychopharmacology and has been named
“Highly Cited Neuroscientist” by the ISI (Institute of
Scientific Information, USA). He is presently an Adjunct
Professor in Neuropharmacology at the Scripps Institute, La
Jolla (CA) and Visiting Professor at the Departments of
Pathology and Pharmacology at Oxford University.
The Lab Scientific Genealogical Tree
Dr Cuello was trained in histology in the
laboratory of Dr Eduardo De Robertis (discoverer of synaptic
vesicles)at the Institute of Cell Biology, Faculty of
Medicine, Buenos Aires University (Argentina) while he was
still a medical student. At the same Institute he was
trained in electron microscopy and initial neuropharmacology
studies with Amanda Pellegrino de Iraldi, who in turn was
trained by Pio Del Rio Hortega, the discoverer of microglia
who was one of the most outstanding disciples of Ramon y
Cajal (Nobel laureate 1906) . Dr Cuello was trained at the
same Institute in human neuroanatomy by Dr. Fernando Orioli,
a disciple of Mettler, a classical USA neuroanatomist.
Later, he acquired expertise in experimental endocrinology
with a Houssay disciple (Nobel Laureate 1947) Dr Umberto
Tramezzani, at the Institute of Neurobiology, Buenos Aires
(Argentina). He spent two years of further postdoctoral
training in the Physiology of the hypothalamic-pituitary
axis combining neuropharmacology and neurochemistry with Dr
William F Ganong (author of the Review of Medical Physiology
20th, 21st and 22nd ed. by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
2001, 2003, 2005). His last postdoctoral stint was done at
the MRC (Medical Research Council of Britain) Neurochemical
Pharmacology Unit in Cambridge (England) under the
leadership of Leslie Iversen. During that year he
incorporated a number of biochemical pharmacology approaches
and developed one of the first highly sensitive
radioenzymatic techniques for the measurement of
catecholamines.
The most influential and inspirational
influences during the formative years were those of Eduardo
De Robertis, William F Ganong and Leslie Iversen.
On his return from England, he accepted a
year’s stint as Assistant Professor in Argentina at the
Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, only to return in 1975
to the Cambridge MRC Neurochemical Pharmacology Unit as MRC
Scientific Staff where he remained until 1978 when he was
offered a joint Academic position at Oxford University
(England) to be held at the Departments of Pharmacology and
of Human anatomy along with the E.P. Abraham Senior Research
Fellowship and Medical Tutor position at Lincoln College
(funded in 1427 by the Bishop of Lincoln). From this
position he came to Canada invited to Chair the Department
of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University a
position he held from 1985 until the year 2000, to soon
accede to the Charles E. Frosst/Merck Chair in Pharmacology.
From the Cambridge, Oxford and McGill positions he trained a
long list of excellent Graduate Students and Post-Doctoral
fellows who became leaders in their fields. The listings of
the mentoring influences and that of the trainees are
represented graphically below
Genealogy Tree (PPT)
Further details of Dr. Cuello’s life
experience and of his academic and scientific evolution
until the year 2000 can be found in a publication sponsored
by the Society for Neuroscience: “The History of
Neuroscience in Autobiography” (Ed. L. Squires, Academic
Press, NY, 2001).
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