Krzysztof Palczewski, the John H. Hord Professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology, was awarded the 2014 Maurice Saltzman Award by the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation.
The award was established in 1983 to honor Maurice Saltzman who, during more than 30 years of involvement with human service needs, demonstrated a special interest in health and medicine. The award recipient must have recently achieved some piece of work of signal value or merit or of national or international importance to the health interests of the community.
Palczewski is internationally known for his work toward restoring sight in individuals whose blindness is related to retinal diseases. His recent breakthrough discovery in the treatment of macular degeneration has been used successfully on animal subjects, and he now seeks funding to move to human clinical trials.
Palczewski’s work in fields such as biochemistry, structural biology and pharmacology of vertebrate vision has been published in more than 300 articles and has earned him numerous national and international awards. In 2011, the president of Poland presented Palczewski with the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, which honored Palczewski’s contribution to the cooperation among his native Poland and other countries. In 2013, he became part of Case Western Reserve’s inaugural class of Faculty Distinguished Research Award recipients.