Penn Memory Center Founding Director Christopher M. Clark, MD, (top row, second from right) is added to the Upper Dublin High School Alumni Hall of Fame on March 24, 2017.
The late Christopher M. Clark, MD, founding director of the Penn Memory Center and Upper Dublin High School alumnus, was inducted into his alma mater’s Alumni Hall of Fame March 24.
Though most honored alumni are recognized for athletic accomplishments, Clark was among the first inductees honored in the new category of Medicine, Science and Technology for his outstanding work in the medical profession.
A widely celebrated neuroscientist and clinician, Clark died in 2012 due to complications from sarcoma, but the impact of his work still resounds in the field of clinical neuroscience. His work changed the way that Alzheimer’s is diagnosed and treated.
“My first reaction to hearing Chris had been chosen was happiness for him,” his wife, Anne Clark, said. “I thought how delighted he would be to be remembered by a school that meant so much to him the years he was there. He was student body president, played clarinet in the band, played football, was on the wrestling team, loved his Latin class.” Dr. Clark stayed in touch with his classmates throughout his life and their time together was a consistent source of joy for him, his wife said.
Honorees met with current Upper Dublin students in large and small group sessions, “answering questions, imparting knowledge and insight and inspiring and energizing them,” said Heidi Yutlzer-Overton, chair of the Alumni Hall of Fame.
Susan Lohoefer, Dr. Clark’s peer, said his absence weighed heavily on the hearts of some of his former classmates.
“What more could Dr. Clark accomplish?” she asked, reassured that through his induction into the Upper Dublin Hall of Fame, an even larger community would understand his contributions to the world.
In 1977, Dr. Clark finished his residency in neurology at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. The next seven years of his life was spent in the neurology department at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. By 1985, he took a position at the Duke University Medical Center where he and a colleague started the multicenter Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease (CERAD), which was a groundbreaking effort in the United States to establish a consistent assessment for Alzheimer’s disease.
His work brought him back to the University of Pennsylvania in 1990, where he served as the director of the Clinical Core of the National Institute of Aging for 17 years until 2007. Dr. Clark was invaluable in founding the Penn Memory Center, where he served as director while at Penn.
When he retired from the UPenn faculty, he became the Medical Director at Avid Radiopharmaceuticals on the research campus of UPenn. In this position, he led an investigation that successfully showed that a florbetapir PET scan could detect deposits of beta amyloid on the brain. This was landmark research that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in January of 2011. This finding was instrumental in advancing clinically applicable diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s disease. In many ways, this moment was a culmination of Dr. Clark’s career where he was able to transform this rarely diagnosed disorder into a widely recognized cause of dementia. He presented this finding to the FDA and died four months before it was accepted.
Reflecting on the life and legacy of Dr. Clark, Jason Karlawish, current Penn Memory Center co-director, writes, “I came to Penn as an instructor because Chris was willing to take a chance on my career, and I am at Penn as co-director of the Penn Memory Center because of the legacy he built. He was truly a founding father. We miss him dearly.”