Brenda Shivers

 7/07/08

New lecture series established to examine neurological disorders

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas has received a donation to create a lecture series at the Higuchi Biosciences Center that will allow KU scientists to share the latest research on neurological and neurodegenerative disorders.

Peter Boxer, vice president of development at OtoMedicine and a retired associate director of CNS pharmacology at Pfizer, initiated the lecture series in memory of Brenda Shivers, who received a doctorate from KU in 1978. Later, she moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., to work at Parke-Davis Research Laboratories (now Pfizer), where she rose to the rank of senior research associate. There she helped discover novel treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases. She suffered from multiple sclerosis and left her job in 1998 because of the disease. Shivers died in July 2007.

The Brenda Shivers Lecture Series was established with a gift from Boxer, which was matched by a contribution from Pfizer to KU Endowment, the independent, nonprofit fundraising and fund-management organization for the university. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.

“The invited lecturers will present on various aspects of neurodegenerative diseases and meet with faculty, post-doctoral research associates and graduate students who work in the field of neuroscience,” said Elias Michaelis, director of the Higuchi Biosciences Center and University Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology. “The Higuchi Biosciences Center has a major thrust on neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, both in the discovery of mechanisms of brain or spinal cord degeneration and of new drug therapies for reversing such degenerative processes. Therefore, the Shivers Lecture Series will become a very important event in bringing together scientists of the center with eminent
scientists from around the world.”

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