Roscoe Brady

Who is Roscoe Brady?

Roscoe Owen Brady was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 11, 1923.

He attended the Pennsylvania State University and obtained his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School in 1947. He interned at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. From 1948 to 1952 he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Physiological Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and fellow in clinical medicine in the Department of Medicine. In collaboration with Samuel Gurin, Brady discovered the enzyme system for the biosynthesis of long chain fatty acids and the role of malonyl coenzyme A in this process. After two and one-half years on active duty in the U.S. Naval Medical Corps, he joined the National Institutes of Health in 1954. He was Chief of the Developmental and Metabolic Neurology Branch in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke from 1972 to 2006. Dr. Brady and his colleagues identified the enzymatic defects in Gaucher disease, Niemann-Pick disease, Fabry disease and the specific metabolic abnormality in Tay-Sachs disease. He and his associates developed diagnostic, carrier detection, prenatal tests for these conditions and effective enzyme replacement therapy for patients with Gaucher disease and Fabry disease. He is currently investigating substrate depletion, molecular chaperone therapy and gene therapy for patients with metabolic storage disorders. Among his awards, Dr. Brady received the Lasker Foundation Award in 1982; the Kovalenko Medal from the National Academy of Sciences USA in 1991; the Alpert Foundation Prize from Harvard Medical School in 1992 and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2008. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.