Byung Ho (Ben) Choi

Dr. Byung Ho (Ben) Choi, a beloved colleague and mentor, passed away on March 22, 2023, at the age of 94. Dr. Choi was recruited as Professor and Director of the Division of Neuropathology at UCI in 1981. Prior to this he had been Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Rochester, where he had been for nine years. Upon his arrival at UCI, he continued his NIH-funded research on developmental human neuropathology and on the adverse effects of methylmercury on the developing fetal brain. At that time he had already established a reputation as a worldwide expert on methylmercury neurotoxicity and, by the time he retired in the year 2000, he had secured three decades of NIH funding.

In 1984 the NIH funded, for the first time, five Alzheimer Disease Research Centers (ADRCs) nationwide. UCI and USC joined together to become one of those centers until, a few years later, the two institutions separated into two centers. The UCI ADRC was directed by Dr. Carl Cotman, and Dr. Choi was the Director of the Neuropathology Core until his retirement.

Dr. Choi’s research in developmental neuropathology was focused on gliogenesis, particularly in relation to the development of astroglial and oligodendroglial cells from radial glia, and resulted in a major paper that was published in Science.

In the late 1990s he became interested in the neurotoxic effects of repin, a sesquiterpone lactone compound found in Russian knapweed, a weed that is widespread in southern California and that, when chronically ingested by horses, results in the development of equine nigropallidal encephalomalacia, a condition that resembles parkinsonism. His laboratory was able to demonstrate that, in cultured PC12 cells, repin inhibits the release of dopamine, and that the study of this compound could therefore be useful for Parkinson disease research.

Dr. Choi was born in North Korea into a closely knit family. His father was a high school principal, a highly honored position in Korea in those days. He learned to play piano and developed a lifelong love of classical music. He led his high school band and composed music for it. It was his intention to develop a career in music. After graduating from high school in the late 1940s, however, his mother urged him strongly to attend college in South Korea, which he did, but there were no openings in schools of music, so he had to choose between a career in pharmaceutical science or in medicine. He chose medicine and entered Severance Union Medical College (now Yonsei University College of Medicine) in Seoul in 1949. Unfortunately, war broke out in Korea in 1950, and everyone fled south to Pusan, where a medical school curriculum was established for the purpose of continuing the education of students of the four medical schools in Seoul who had fled south. It was there that he met Chan Ock (Pearl) Park, a medical student at Women’s Medical College, who became his wife in 1956. Upon graduation from medical school in 1953, the two of them moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Dr. Choi entered the pathology residency training program at Case Western Reserve University. He completed two years of fellowship training in neuropathology in 1959, whereupon he returned to Korea as a faculty member at Yonsei University College of Medicine. He wanted to develop a research career and returned to the United States as a research fellow in the Department of Pathology at Albany Medical from 1965-1967 and served as Assistant Professor of Pathology from 1967-1969. He then served as Associate Professor of Pathology at Saint Louis University, and subsequently moved to the University of Rochester School of Medicine, where he stayed from 1972-1981, eventually becoming Professor of Pathology.

Dr, Choi particularly loved doing research and he loved teaching. During his tenure as faculty at Yonsei and at Rochester the students treasured his teaching. At Rochester he won the teacher of the year award each year he was there. While he was at UCI he was always ranked at the top of the faculty who taught in the sophomore pathology course. Other faculty would sometimes attend his lectures in order to learn his teaching techniques.

Dr. Choi also loved teaching residents and fellows and others who spent time in his laboratory to learn research techniques. Additionally, he served for many years as a faculty member for the Special Course in Neuropathology at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. And, finally, even after retirement, he was asked on several occasions to give lectures on neuroscience topics to the Korean Medical Association in America.

He was, in essence, the heart and soul of neuropathology during his tenure at UCI, and those of us who knew him will miss him greatly.

Ronald C. Kim, MD, HS Clinical Professor, Emeritus
Departments of Pathology and Neuropathology, UC Irvine