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Endocrine Reviews 19 (4): 506-519
Copyright © 1998 by The Endocrine Society

THE ENDOCRINE SOCIETY 1998 ANNUAL AWARDS


    Citation for the 1998 Fred Conrad Koch Award of The Endocrine Society to Dr. Anthony R. Means
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The Endocrine Society’s highest honor, the Fred Conrad Koch Award, is presented in 1998 to Anthony R. Means, Ph.D., Professor and Chairman, Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University School of Medicine. In citing Dr. Means to receive this award, the Society recognizes his career-long dedication to outstanding research and teaching in the field of endocrinology. He has a uniquely broad range of accomplishments, extending from an early interest in female sex hormones, to gonadotropins, the molecular biology of gene expression, and more recently in elucidating the role of intracellular signaling by calcium in control of the cell cycle through phosphorylation. His contributions to the Society have been numerous, having served on many committees. However, he has been particularly devoted to expanding the impact of the Society’s newest journal, Molecular Endocrinology, to the first rank of peer-reviewed journals. It has been through his keen oversight and judicious choice of editorial board members, his strict adherence to criteria of scientific excellence and his sense of fairness that Molecular Endocrinology has attained such a lofty perch. In a way, his scientific success mirrors the journal’s success; those same criteria of excellence have always been the hallmark of Dr. Means’ own research efforts.

He grew up in Oklahoma, receiving his undergraduate degree from Oklahoma State University. Like so many Oklahomans before him, he made the trip across the Red River to enter graduate school at the University of Texas, where he studied under the renowned endocrinologist, Terrell Hamilton. It was in Dr. Hamilton’s laboratory that Dr. Means began his work on estrogens and their effects on RNA and protein synthesis. During a postdoctoral traineeship in Dr. Peter Hall’s laboratory in Australia, Tony began his career-long work on gonadotropins and their regulation of activity of the testis. He performed the earliest experiments to measure the effects of FSH upon RNA and protein synthesis in the rat testis during those formative years.

Upon his return to the United States, Dr. Means was recruited in 1969 to join Dr. Bert O’Malley in founding the Center for Population Research at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, one of the premier molecular endocrinology research groups of its day. There he began an extremely productive and informative collaboration with O’Malley in studies of the effects of estrogens in regulation of the ovalbumin gene in the chick oviduct. That work continued as Tony moved his laboratory group with the team to Baylor College of Medicine in 1972. At the Department of Cell Biology, where he served as vice-chairman, his group’s work led to the isolation of the first messenger RNAs and complementary DNAs for hormone-regulated genes, elucidation of their pathway of expression, and eventually to studies of the pathway of precursor messenger RNA splicing in elaboration of the mature transcripts.

While his collaborative efforts with O’Malley were continuing, Tony maintained his central interest in protein synthesis. His group’s studies of the mechanism of protein synthesis using isolated polysomes, and the role of hormones in affecting initiation and elongation factors, were particularly revealing. His broad interests in hormonal effects led him to study apolipoprotein metabolism, and the elucidation of the role of estrogens in modulating concentrations of these proteins. That work presaged much of the pivotal clinical interest in estrogens and the cardiovascular system with which nearly every informed citizen is today aware.

In 1977, Dr. Means and his team published their first papers describing what they called the "calcium-dependent regulator protein." A year later, in collaboration with Dr. Bill Brinkley, they described this protein’s association with microtubules of the mitotic apparatus. That protein soon acquired a much more classy name: today we call it calmodulin. Those papers began Tony’s second career-long interest: the regulation of intracellular processes by calcium. Soon he was to show that calmodulin is, in effect, the intracellular receptor for calcium. In an elegant series of studies over the following decade, Dr. Means’ group established the pivotal role of calmodulin in regulating the activity of myosin light-chain kinase, mapped the functional domains of calmodulin, and in collaboration with Charles Bugg and later Florante Quiocho determined the three-dimensional crystal structure of the protein. Through those structural studies and the use of recombinant DNA methods to create site-specific calmodulin mutants, Tony achieved a remarkably complete understanding of the way the structure of the protein and its changes due to calcium impact upon the various target processes. Numerous other enzyme substrates appeared as targets for calmodulin’s many regulatory roles. Ultimately, he and his colleagues confirmed the physiologic role of these pathways through development of transgenic mouse models of human diseases.

The decade of the 1990s began with the realization that there was a central unifying theme to the role of calmodulin: it controls the cell’s progression through the cell cycle. These studies, performed initially in mammalian cells and then in collaboration with Stephen Osmani and Gregory May using the mold Aspergillus nidulans, allowed direct observation of cell progression by fluorescence microscopy. They used genetic mutants to dissect out the key blockade points in the cycle that were affected by calmodulin. Most recently Tony’s group has shown that calmodulin is also a key regulator of T lymphocyte proliferation and activation.

Dr. Means accepted the chairmanship of Pharmacology at Duke in 1992, where he has built an enviably diverse and prolific academic department while continuing his remarkable scientific work. Detailed studies of specific interfaces between calmodulin and its targets have continued to this date. His achievements have been the fuel of many a research fellow’s own career launch; he has attracted and trained some of the most productive workers in the field of hormone action and cell cycle control. With the merger of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology in a single department in 1997, his work on the cell cycle now attains new levels of immediacy for understanding of human disease.

Tony’s scientific "family" even extends to home; his wife, Raylene, is herself a scientist. Their children, Meagan and Christopher, are a central focus of Tony’s off-hours time. His vigorous interests in science and his devotion to his friends have been hallmarks of this enviably robust career. I take great pleasure in the opportunity to help our Society recognize Anthony Means as a genuine scholar, influential scientific citizen, and close friend.

William T. Schrader, Ph.D.


    Citation for the 1998 Ernst Oppenheimer Memorial Award of The Endocrine Society to Dr. Roger Cone
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The Awards Committee of the Endocrine Society is pleased to present the 1998 Ernst Oppenheimer Award to Dr. Roger Cone. This award is given to an outstanding investigator under the age of 45.

A native of Denver, Colorado, Dr. Cone received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University, where he first developed an interest in intracellular signal transduction, studying calcium regulation of slime mold aggregation with J. T. Bonner. Bonner was a pioneer in Dictyostelium research and had the remarkable ability to dissect complex behaviors to their cellular and molecular components. Reflecting on his life in science, Bonner once commented: "I do not look at biology and its major themes in a conventional manner. I pull biology apart and put it back together in a way that is quite different from that of the average biologist on the street. I do not do this just to play games, or just to be different—I do this because I think many of the more conventional approaches miss the important point as they bear down on details that fit with the views of the moment. My objective is to achieve a more cohesive, more profound view of the science of life—one that has a greater inner consistency and a greater meaning." (J. T. Bonner, Life Cycles - Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1993). Dr. Cone was apparently granted Bonner’s gift of being able to look at biology in an unconventional way, identifying themes and connections that elude us average biologists.

Cone did his graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Biology. As Dr. Richard Mulligan’s first graduate student, he developed a retroviral packaging cell line, designated {varphi}2, that paved the way for current approaches to gene therapy. It was also as a graduate student that Cone was first introduced to endocrine research. In collaboration with Dr. Henry Kronenberg, he used his retroviral gene transfer approach to introduce the human PTH into rat pituitary cells.

As a Cold Spring Harbor fellow, Dr. Cone adapted the retroviral gene transfer technique to introduce viral transforming proteins into differentiated epithelial cells. These experiments led him to examine the regulation of thyroid cell growth and, subsequently, to clone the TSH receptor, which he accomplished while he was in the Molecular Medicine division at Tufts-New England Medical Center.

After moving to the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health Sciences University eight years ago, Cone turned his attention to other peptide hormone receptors, including those for ACTH and MSH. Cone’s cloning of the ACTH receptor was an important contribution, but his studies on pigmentation were truly groundbreaking. Although there are many examples of the hormonal control of hair and skin color in animals, the regulation of pigmentation is not generally classified as an endocrinological phenomenon (with the exception, of course, of the hyperpigmentation associated with Addison’s disease and related disorders). Breeding studies performed many years ago had shown that two genetic loci, extension and agouti, control the production of brown-black (eumelanin) and yellow-red (phaeomelanin) pigments responsible for hair color. Cone hypothesized that the MSH receptor might correspond to one or the other of these pigmentation genes. With his collaborator, Linda Robbins, who tragically died last year following an automobile accident, he showed that the MSH receptor did, in fact, correspond to extension and demonstrated that the pigmentation phenotypes of variant extension loci result from point mutations that alter MSH receptor function. By correlating the coat colors of inbred strains of mice with the pharmacological properties of receptor mutants, Cone was able to construct a structure-function map of the receptor. The paradigm established through those studies has now been extended to several other species of animals and many other G protein-coupled receptors. Cone also provided a molecular explanation for interaction of extension and agouti alleles. Agouti encodes a protein that binds to the MSH receptor and antagonizes MSH action. This work provided the first example of a naturally occurring G protein-coupled receptor blocker.

Overexpression of agouti leads, surprisingly, to an obesity syndrome, which suggested to Dr. Cone and colleagues that the agouti protein could have effects beyond its well characterized role in pigmentation. The finding that agouti also antagonizes MC4, a hypothalamic melanocortin receptor, led him to speculate that melanocortin peptides could have important central nervous system functions. Following this lead, Cone determined that null mutations in MC4 recapitulated the agouti obesity syndrome, as did the intracerebroventricular administration of a specific MC4 antagonist. These studies established a role for melanocortinergic neurons in feeding behavior. His work on the other melanocortin receptors has provided several additional new models of homeostatic regulation.

Dr. Cone has clearly established himself among the most creative investigators of his generation, and The Endocrine Society is proud to acknowledge his accomplishments. We expect that he will continue to make major advances in our field.

Richard H. Goodman, M.D., Ph.D.


    Citation for the 1998 Robert H. Williams Distinguished Leadership Award of The Endocrine Society to Dr. Delbert A. Fisher
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The Endocrine Society takes great pleasure in presenting the 1998 Robert Williams Distinguished Leadership Award to Dr. Delbert Fisher in recognition of his legion of contributions over the past thirty years as a leader in the activities of The Endocrine Society and as a renowned investigator and educator. Fisher has played a seminal leadership role in the development of neonatal screening programs, worldwide, for the detection of congenital hypothyroidism, a disorder that affects about 1 in 4,000 newborns.

Del Fisher, a third generation Californian, was born and raised in rural California. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Berkeley in 1950 and earned his M.D. degree from the University of California San Francisco in 1953.

As a medical student, Del began working with Donald Pickering studying thyroid function in newborn Macaque monkeys. As a pediatric resident at the Medical Center of the University of California San Francisco, he co-authored six papers describing the effects of 131I thyroid ablation on growth and development and iodine metabolism of infant Macaque monkeys and pioneered the use of Na-1-thyroxine for replacement treatment of the athyroid monkey and the human infant with congenital hypothyroidism. This was a time when desiccated thyroid preparations of various potency were the standard treatment.

After two years as an Air Force physician, Fisher rejoined Pickering at the University of Oregon, where he completed pediatric and endocrine training and continued metabolic studies in infant monkeys. In 1960, he joined the Medical School faculty of the University of Arizona, where he directed the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism, garnered an NIH Career Development Award, and served as Associate Director of the NIH-supported Clinical Studies Center. There, in collaboration with Thomas Oddie, a nuclear physicist, he co-authored a series of papers using whole body isotopic counting technology to study iodine and thyroid metabolism and thyroid hormone kinetics in human subjects. Fisher made the critical, original observations of neonatal thyroidal hyperactivity as a response to neonatal cooling, the high thyroxine secretion rate in infants, and of the changes in iodine metabolism and thyroxine production with age.

In 1968, Del moved to the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center to join William Odell in the formation of a combined Medicine-Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism Division focused on hormone immunoassay development and human endocrine physiology, which proved to be a rich environment for Del’s insatiable curiosity, collegiality, and intellectual drive. To study fetal endocrine physiology, Del Fisher used the fetal sheep model, and with Jean Dussault and Inder Chopra, applied newly developed immunoassays for T4, T3, reverse T3, and ovine TSH to the first comprehensive characterization of the ontogenesis of the mammalian fetal thyroid system. These studies were the first to describe the limited placental transfer of thyroxine in the sheep, the low T3 and high reverse T3 state of the fetus, the low type I iodothyronine monodeiodinase levels in fetal tissues, the neonatal TSH surge, the transient neonatal hyperthyroid state in the term newborn, and the rapid reversal of the low T3/reverse T3 ratio secondary to the increase in type I deiodinase activity in the newborn period. With his collaborators, the new methods were adapted to studies of ontogenic changes in thyroid function in the human premature and full-term newborn infant.

Dussault, the first fellow in Fisher’s laboratory at UCLA, returned to the University of Laval in Québec City and, applying the new T4 RIA to filter paper blood spots collected for PKU screening, reported in 1973 with C. Laberge the development of the first mass population screening program for congenital hypothyroidism. The transition to TSH screening (after Del’s colleague Al Parlow developed a highly sensitive, specific TSH assay on filter paper blood spots) and collaborative monitoring of the development and efficacy of these programs was coordinated by the Newborn Screening Committee of the American Thyroid Association under Fisher’s Chairmanship. Del was a founding member of the International Conference Series on newborn thyroid screening, function, and disorders, which in the mid-1980s reported the results of the first million newborns screened. Newborn hypothyroid screening is now standard practice in the industrialized world and has virtually eliminated sporadic congenital hypothyroidism as a cause of mental retardation. Over 150 of Fisher’s peer-reviewed papers are concerned with thyroid development and metabolism.

Although thyroid function has been a major focus of his laboratory, Del and his over 40 fellows explored other areas of mammalian endocrine system ontogenesis characterizing maturation of the neurohypophysial hormone systems; the atrial natruiretic hormone system; the renin-angiotensin system; perinatal aspects of insulin, glucagon, and carbohydrate metabolism; fetal catecholamine metabolism and vascular homeostasis; and maturation and hormone regulation of epidermal and transforming growth factors in mammalian fetal-neonatal growth and development. He is the author or co-author of over 500 scientific papers, book chapters, and reviews, and seven books. The research of Fisher and his co-workers is marked by novelty, versatility, and the capacity to adapt new advances and methodology; it has spanned the spectrum of pioneering immunoassay development, hormone kinetics, receptor characterization, biochemical studies, cellular and molecular methods; and to the extent possible, he has translated the basic and animal studies to improved patient care in the hospital and clinic.

Del has been a legendary mentor of fellows—a "wise and trusted counselor" in guiding trainees to successful academic careers and to the status of colleagues. In functioning as a role model, he drove home the importance of careful planning, stringent attention to detail, the critical use of time, and the joy of research. Known for his frankness and toughness, a story possibly apocryphal illustrates these qualities. A well-known event in the Fisher laboratory is the day one of his former trainees burst into Del’s office to tell him the good news that he had just been informed of the approval of his first R01 grant. Del looked up, smiled, and said, "That’s great, but the real key is getting it renewed."

Apart from his extraordinary research accomplishments, which have had a major impact on the prevention of mental retardation and our knowledge of the ontogenesis of endocrine function, he has been a distinguished leader in endocrinology and academic medicine, serving at the University of California Los Angeles as Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine, Director of the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism, and the Perinatal Research Laboratories at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and later, before retirement, as Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics and Director of the Martin Research Center. He currently serves as President of the Academic Associates and Chief Science Officer at Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute, directing the development and provision of laboratory testing of endocrine and metabolic disorders at one of the world’s largest endocrine laboratories. Del is truly indefatigable!

A host of professional societies have been enriched by Del’s service and leadership, including his terms as Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism and of Pediatric Research and his election to the Presidencies of The Endocrine Society, the American Thyroid Association, the American Pediatric Society, and the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society.

While at Berkeley, Del met Beverly Carne, his partner for the past 47 years, and his ardent supporter and critic. Many of you know Beverly from her tenure as the gifted, compassionate managing editor of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Del Fisher has received many awards and honors during his distinguished career, including election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, but none can be more appropriate and more cherished than this recognition by his peers in endocrinology as exemplified by the Distinguished Leadership Award.

Melvin M. Grumbach, M.D.


    Citation for the 1998 Edwin B. Astwood Lecture Award of The Endocrine Society to Dr. Allen M. Spiegel
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Allen Spiegel was born on May 18, 1946, in a Displaced Persons’ Camp in Landsberg, Germany. With his parents, both survivors of Auschwitz, he emigrated to the U.S., arriving in New York City at the age of 3. He received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Columbia College, graduated from Harvard Medical School, cum laude, in 1971, and did an internship and residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He came to the NIH in 1973 as a Clinical Associate and has remained there since. He was given tenure in 1977, became a Section Chief in 1985, a Branch Chief in 1988, and since 1990 has served as Director of the Division of Intramural Research of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

As an undergraduate, Allen obtained a research position in the laboratory of Mark Bitensky, who had just returned from NIH, where he trained with Gordon Tomkins. Bitensky introduced Spiegel to cAMP as a "second messenger" of hormone action. This was to become a major focus of Spiegel’s career. Spiegel then joined the laboratory of the late Gerry Aurbach at NIH. Aurbach had defined cAMP as the second messenger of PTH action in kidney and bone, and had shown that PTH infusion dramatically elevates urinary cAMP excretion in normal humans and that patients with the hormone resistance disorder, pseudohypoparathyroidism (PHP), lack this normal rise in urinary cAMP following PTH. The nearby laboratory of Marty Rodbell, moreover, had just performed seminal studies that led to the identification of G proteins, the heterotrimeric signal transducers that are now known to couple a multitude of receptors to diverse effectors, such as the cAMP-producing enzyme, adenylyl cyclase. Aurbach handed the newly arrived Spiegel a vial of GppNHp, a nonhydrolyzable GTP analog, and with characteristic nonchalance, suggested he might wish to study the effects of this nucleotide on hormone-stimulated cAMP production.

Spiegel fortunately followed Aurbach’s not completely innocent "suggestion," and the resulting data published in their first joint Journal of Biological Chemistry paper marked the beginning of Spiegel’s career-long interest in G protein-mediated signal transduction. First as a fellow with Aurbach and later as an independent investigator, Spiegel made numerous significant contributions to the study of G protein structure and function. He was among the first to develop useful antibodies against each of the G protein subunits. He showed that antibodies against the G protein {alpha}-subunit carboxy-terminus uncoupled G proteins from their recep-tors and that such antibodies could be used in living cells and cell membranes to define the specificity of receptor-G protein coupling, an approach that has been widely applied by other investigators. He was also able to define the role of lipid modifications of G protein-{alpha} and {gamma}-subunits in subunit assembly and membrane targeting.

Given his training in basic aspects of signal transduction, Spiegel was able to apply these concepts to solving longstanding enigmas in clinical endocrinology. Albright had first described PHP and indeed named it as a disorder involving resistance to PTH action. Aurbach’s studies placed the site of hormone resistance proximal to cAMP production. Based on anecdotal case reports, and eventually his own clinical studies of subjects with PHP, Spiegel hypothesized that the defect in PHP might reside in the G protein, Gs, responsible for coupling not only PTH receptors but many other receptors to cAMP production. Spiegel’s studies with a series of gifted colleagues including Michael Levine and Lee Weinstein eventually identified loss of function mutations in the Gs{alpha} gene in many subjects with PHP. In the McCune-Albright syndrome, a sporadic disorder characterized by autonomous endocrine hyperfunction, patches of skin hyperpigmentation and fibrous dysplasia bone lesions, Spiegel with Weinstein and Andrew Shenker identified somatic gain of function mutations in the Gs{alpha} gene as the etiologic defect. For another hormone resistance disorder, nephrogenic diabetes insipidus, Spiegel and colleagues at NIH, were one of several groups to define the molecular pathogenesis, loss of function mutations in the Gs-coupled V2-vasopressin receptor. Spiegel also fostered the independent work of Andrew Shenker in his laboratory in demonstrating that familial male precocious puberty is caused by activating mutations of the LH receptor.

Spiegel’s work on mutations in G proteins and G protein-coupled receptors in endocrine disease has had a wide impact both for basic understanding of the structure and function of these proteins and for diagnosis and treatment of the disorders caused by such mutations. Beyond this major focus of his research, Spiegel has continued the very successful clinical research program on primary hyperparathyroidism initiated by Aurbach at the NIH Clinical Center. With numerous colleagues at NIH, most particularly Stephen Marx, Spiegel has contributed to our understanding of sporadic primary hyperparathyroidism, and inherited disorders such as familial hypocalciuric hypercalcemia and multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1.

Spiegel has also trained numerous outstanding young investigators, many of whom have gone on to make distinguished contributions of their own. In addition as Scientific Director of NIDDK for the past seven years, Spiegel has helped foster what is widely recognized as one of the most outstanding intramural research programs at NIH. Spiegel has received substantial recognition for his contributions, including the Jacobaeus Prize, plenary lectureships of the Japan Endocrine Society, Endocrine Society of Australia, Society for Study of Inborn Errors of Metabolism, and the Aurbach Memorial Lecture of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. The Endocrine Society is proud to have selected him as this year’s recipient of the Edwin B. Astwood Lecture Award.

Jacob Robbins, M.D.


    Citation for the 1998 Monsanto Clinical Investigator Award of The Endocrine Society to Dr. Cyril Y. Bowers
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The Endocrine Society is pleased to present Dr. Cyril Y. Bowers with the 1998 Monsanto Clinical Investigator Award in recognition of his contributions in the field of hypothalamic hormones and his discovery of the GH-releasing peptide pathway and its clinical and therapeutic importance.

Cy was born on March 28, 1924. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 1945 with a B.A. degree and received his M.D. degree at the University of Oregon Medical School, graduating in 1949. Cy completed his medical internship at the University of Washington in Seattle, followed by a year of medical biochemistry study at Cornell University. From 1950–1952, he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps. In 1952 he became a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine at Tulane University. He worked with Dr. Albert Segaloff at Ochsner Clinic and joined the faculty of Tulane University School of Medicine in 1958, becoming Professor of Medicine in 1967.

Cy has received many honors including the Van Meter Award of the American Thyroid Association in 1969 and was a member of the NIH Endocrinology Study Section from 1973–1978 and from 1984–1988. He has published widely since 1955 on many different aspects of endocrinology. In 1964, he began to work in collaboration with Andrew Schally, and since that time has devoted his career to the study of hypothalamic function and the isolation, characterization, and physiology of hypothalamic regulatory hormones. He has made important research contributions to each of the hypothalamic-pituitary axes: thyroid, gonads, adrenal, GH, vasopressin, and PRL. He was intimately involved in the original purification of thyrotropic hormone releasing factor. His bibliography reads like a history of development of the field hypothalamic pituitary relationships and function.

In this citation, I want to stress his contributions to the field of GH research. Working together with Frank Momany, Cy Bowers was able to model and mutate the enkephalins, to identify an intrinsic GH-releasing activity. From these experiments, Cy created GH-releasing peptide-6 (GHRP6), a hexapeptide with D-amino acids. This compound was extensively studied in animals and later in humans. It acts to stimulate GH secretion through a unique receptor, which interacts neither with somatostatin nor with the GH-releasing hormone. In fact, GHRP-6 was described before the original isolation of the GH-releasing hormone.

Dr. Bowers’ studies have served as the foundation for a totally new approach to the understanding of the regulation of GH secretion and has opened a whole new area of endocrine therapy. From his work, it was apparent that there was a receptor for the GH-releasing peptide and the group at Merck was able to clone it. The Merck group, as well as several others, has developed nonpeptide GHRP mimetics, some of which are orally active. These compounds offer the prospect of being able to stimulate GH secretion in GH deficient subjects and in older subjects whose GH secretion declines. This could have major implications for the treatment of children with short stature and patients with catabolic states, and possibly in reversing some aspects of the aging process.

Cy Bowers has always been a profound scientist and innovative leader in the field of neuroendocrinology. He understates his accomplishments and has not pushed himself forward to gain recognition. Consequently, his contributions have sometimes been overlooked. Therefore, The Endocrine Society takes special pleasure in recognizing his many important accomplishments with its 1998 Monsanto Clinical Investigator Award.

Michael O. Thorner, M.D.


    Citation for the 1998 Gerald D. Aurbach Lecture Award of The Endocrine Society to Dr. JoAnne S. Richards
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The Endocrine Society is delighted to honor Dr. JoAnne S. Richards with the Gerald D. Aurbach Lecture Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the field of endocrinological regulation of the ovary. She has made seminal advances in understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in the hormonal control of ovarian cell differentiation. Jo is Professor of Cell Biology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Jo was born in New Hampshire and received her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College, where she graduated cum laude. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University and her thesis research involved the study of how the ovary and adrenals influenced the estrous cycle, pregnancy, and lactation in the rat. It was during this time that Jo attended her first two scientific meetings. At the first meeting in Dallas, Jo presented a paper in a session chaired by the reproductive biologist Ari Van Tienhoven. He and Jo developed a friendship that has persisted until today. The second, in Boston, marked the time when the late Cornelia Channing first presented her exciting data demonstrating the luteinization of ovarian granulosa cells in culture. These meetings and the friends made during them had a profound influence on Jo’s scientific career.

After completion of the Ph.D., Jo went to the University of Michigan to undertake postdoctoral work in the Reproductive Endocrine Program. This was during the time that RIAs and RRAs were being developed to quantify gonadotropin and steroid receptors, and the group at Michigan played important roles in these technological achievements. Jo began to study the effects of estrogen and FSH on the proliferation of granulosa cells. Remarkably, between 1973 and 1975, she published a series of four single author papers in Endocrinology detailing the changes in estrogen receptor content that occurred in corpora lutea during pregnancy and in rat granulosa cells during development. Her postdoctoral experience was enriched by Rees Midgley, Fred Karsch, Landis Keyes, and Anita Payne, all reproductive endocrinologists whom Jo holds in high esteem. During her years at Michigan, Jo had the opportunity to interact with a long list of consultants to the Program and feels that several such individuals, including the late Griff Ross, her current Chairman, Bert O’Malley, and other scientists who also became her faculty colleagues in Baylor’s Cell Biology Department, provided inspiration and encouragement for pursuing a career in academic science. It is also remarkable that due to the strength of the Michigan program, many of Jo’s graduate student and postdoctoral peers have remained true to the study of reproductive endocrinology and have remained dear friends as well as colleagues in science.

As a consequence of her academic accomplishments, Jo remained at Michigan for ten years and became an Associate Professor in 1979. By that time she had become the undisputed leader in the field of hormonal regulation of ovarian cell proliferation and was selected to present her work at the 1978 Laurentian Hormone Conference. In 1981, Jo was recruited to the Baylor College of Medicine as Associate Professor of Cell Biology. She immediately took full advantage of the wealth of molecular techniques in use by her faculty colleagues. Jo and her students identified that granulosa cell responsiveness to gonadotropins was influenced by cAMP and that a regulatory subunit of the cAMP-dependent protein kinase, RIIß, was up-regulated during granulosa cell development. By 1986, in collaboration with a Norwegian postdoctoral fellow, Torre Jahnsen, and aided by a number of outstanding associates, Jo’s group had cloned the RIIß cDNA from a rat granulosa cell cDNA library and investigated how the level of RIIß mRNA changed in response to hormones. This was a major advance in the field as these studies were the first to investigate hormonal regulation of a specific granulosa cell mRNA. Subsequently, the Richards laboratory has cloned a number of genes that are regulated during ovarian cell development, including P450ssc, prostaglandin synthase, and {alpha}2 macroglobulin. Novel insight into cell proliferation and differentiation have arisen as a consequence of each new hormonal target. Most recently, in collaboration with Piotr Sicinski and Robert Weinberg, Jo has demonstrated that cyclin D2 is a cAMP-responsive gene involved in granulosa cell proliferation. As usual, this collaboration stimulated Jo to ask additional questions. She and Rebecca Robker, a graduate student, have shown that the hormonal regulation of the cyclin D2/cyclin-dependent protein kinase, which is a complex intimately involved in the movement of cells from G1 to S during the cell cycle, plays a critical role in coordinating whether hormones cause proliferation or differentiation of granulosa cells in culture.

In 1988, Jo was promoted to Professor of Cell Biology and that same year was appointed as the Director of Graduate Studies in the department, titles she continues to hold today. The emergence of the graduate program in Cell Biology as one of the best in the country is considerably related to Jo’s many talents. Jo has the remarkable ability to make everyone with whom she speaks feel special. One always feels at ease when talking with Jo and immediately recognizes that she genuinely cares about you as a person and your development as a scientist. Jo is modest, never takes herself too seriously, and is a wonderful mentor and colleague. She has trained 18 Ph.D. students and 17 postdoctoral fellows. She cares deeply about each one and, to her credit, remains close to all. Her loyalty extends to her many colleagues and collaborators. Each person is appreciated for some specific and unique reason and is considered as a true friend. Jo has served tirelessly and in many capacities for both the Society for the Study of Reproduction and The Endocrine Society. She received the Society for the Study of Reproduction Research Award in 1989 and the Griff T. Ross Award from The Endocrine Society in 1990. Jo Richards richly deserves to be the recipient of the 1998 Gerald D. Aurbach Award.

Anthony R. Means, Ph.D.


    Citation for the 1998 Sidney H. Ingbar Distinguished Service Award of The Endocrine Society to Drs. Phillip Gorden, Ronald Margolis, and Philip Smith
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The Endocrine Society is pleased to present this year’s Sidney H. Ingbar Distinguished Service Award to three key scientists at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the lead institute for endocrinology research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Their activities in support of basic and clinical endocrinology by the NIH have been of prime importance in maintaining the vitality of our discipline in difficult times. The awardees are the Institute’s Director, Phillip Gorden, and two of its program directors, Ronald Margolis and Philip Smith.

Dr. Gorden has been an active endocrine researcher and a thoughtful leader within the endocrine community throughout his professional life. Reared in Baldwyn, Mississippi, Gorden received his B.A. and M.D. from Vanderbilt University and completed his internship, residency, and clinical and research fellowships at Yale, and joined the Clinical Endocrinology Branch of the NIDDK, then the NIAMD, as a senior investigator in 1966. In 1974, he went on to become a senior investigator in the Diabetes Branch and the Clinical Director of the Institute. Gorden became Institute Director in 1986.

Gorden’s personal research accomplishments are extensive, including pioneering studies of GH and acromegaly. He is best known for his many contributions on the mechanism of action of insulin through the insulin receptor, particularly in insulin-resistant states, and on other polypeptide hormone receptors. This work has helped to illuminate the process of phosphorylation, endocytosis, and other components of the intricate cascade of events in insulin action and provided new insights into the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes.

As the NIDDK Director, Phil Gorden has continued to be an active scientist, while managing the diverse and complex programs of the Institute. He has maintained the high quality and strength of the Institute’s endocrine research programs during many years of severe budget constraints. As part of the senior leadership of the NIH, Gorden has always taken a keen interest in and been an advocate for basic research and has truly delighted, with pride and enthusiasm, in each new scientific development emerging from the field of endocrinology. In public policy arenas, he has underscored the importance of supporting fundamental endocrine research because of its broad relevance to public health problems. For example, he has emphasized the relationship of basic research on steroid hormones and growth factors to such critical health issues as breast, prostate, and thyroid cancer. He has also demonstrated how vital endocrinology is to a wide range of debilitating diseases such as osteoporosis. He has underscored the critical connections between endocrinology and the neurosciences by promoting workshops and research initiatives on the neuroendocrine control of obesity and the significance of new hormones such as leptin, the product of a key obesity gene in mice, with human parallels. By stressing these and other examples of the relevance of endocrinology to the understanding, prevention, and treatment of disease, Gorden has been a highly effective advocate for the endocrinology research community and has contributed immensely to protecting and preserving its resource base. Gorden has also emphasized the NIDDK commitment to diabetes as an endocrine disease. His leadership is helping to move diabetes research into new, innovative directions by harnessing and applying the new tools of modern molecular biology.

It has been a tremendous benefit to the endocrine community to have as the Director of the NIDDK a scientist and a decision-maker with a fervent commitment to fundamental sciences and their clinical application. Members of the endocrine community have had a particularly productive and congenial working relationship with Gorden. He is not an unknown administrator with little insight or understanding about the research enterprise. Rather, he is both a peer and a colleague who is thoroughly versed in the issues faced in both the laboratory and the clinic, and who is a key player in effectively addressing and resolving them through his leadership of the NIDDK.

Phil is also an ardent supporter of research training. He has led the National Advisory Council for the NIDDK into the development of new approaches to meet the research training and manpower needs of both new and established investigators. He has promoted programs that are sensitive to the needs of investigators at many points on the continuum of a research career. He has sought to attract, nurture, and retain talented investigators and science administrators.

Ron Margolis and Phil Smith are two top-notch science administrators who manage the endocrine research programs under Phil Gorden’s directorship and share with him the 1998 Ingbar Award. Since Margolis and Smith joined the NIH, they have been tireless in their efforts to promote the health and well being of the endocrinology research programs. As program directors in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases at the NIDDK, they have kept their fingers on the pulse of rapidly emerging research trends and translated that insight into new research initiatives. Margolis and Smith have been steadying influences through times of funding scarcity, as well as enthusiastic supporters in times of plenty. They have helped to translate the policies and practices of a complex bureaucracy into plain and simple language. By their advocacy of applicants at the margins of funding, they have been able to help individual investigators through lean times between funding, and they have been strong proponents of that most endangered species, the young investigator. Both Margolis and Smith credit their ability to help members of The Endocrine Society to the environment established by Phil Gorden, who has encouraged them to be creative and to interact freely with the research community.

Ron Margolis, Director of the Training and Career Development Program for the NIDDK Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases, came to NIDDK from academia in late 1989 after training and teaching experiences at SUNY Albany, Syracuse, the University of Virginia, and Howard University. His personal research initially focused on the role of glucocorticoids in the regulation of carbohydrate metabolism and more recently on signal transduction through the insulin receptor tyrosine kinase. Upon joining the NIDDK, he immediately took over the Endocrinology Research Program, shaping the molecular endocrinology and bone and mineral components into strong programs centered on cutting-edge research. Through national and international workshops and conferences, Margolis has highlighted new ideas and helped advance emerging fields. No less important than his support of basic and clinical research have been his efforts to ensure that the next generation of investigators is in place, well-trained, and ready to contribute to the science. To this end, Margolis has been a keen supporter of training and career development.

Phil Smith, Director of the Neuroendocrinology Program and of the Hormone Distribution Program, also came to the NIDDK from academia, in late 1990, after training and teaching experiences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the University of Virginia, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. His academic research career focused on the role of functional heterogeneity of pituitary cells in reproductive cyclicity. Soon after arriving at the NIDDK, he assumed responsibility for the scientific direction of the National Hormone and Pituitary Program and has reshaped that program to be more responsive to the future needs of endocrine researchers. He was responsible for creation of the Neuroendocrine and Pituitary Research Program and has taken on management of the Growth Factors Program as well. Smith has used the combination of skills he gained as an extramural researcher and his appreciation for the nuances of NIH policy to provide advice to many members of the Society. He has been a strong advocate not only for the field of endocrine research but also for the people who do the work. In addition to his duties at NIH, Smith has served on several committees of the Society, as well as key committees within the NIH advocating the shared interests of the NIDDK and endocrine researchers. He has presented numerous talks on NIH and grantsmanship in conjunction with the Society and on his own. His commitment to research is clear to anyone who has interacted with him.

For their advocacy and stewardship in support and enhancement of endocrinology research, The Endocrine Society is proud to give this Distinguished Service Award jointly to Phillip Gorden, Ronald Margolis, and Philip Smith, whose dedication to our field is a tribute to the memory of Sidney H. Ingbar.

Jacob Robbins, M.D.

(The writer is indebted to Judith Fradkin, M.D., Acting Chief of the Diabetes Research Programs Branch and Chief of the Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases Programs Branch, in which both Ron Margolis and Phil Smith serve. Fradkin, herself a scientist who completed her endocrinology training in the intramural program at the NIH, has been a mentor to both Margolis and Smith and provided essential input into the description of their contributions. The writer also thanks Carol Feld, Associate Director for Scientific Program and Policy Analysis for her important contribution to this citation.)


    Citation for the 1998 Distinguished Educator Award of The Endocrine Society to Dr. Neena B. Schwartz
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The Endocrine Society is pleased to present the inaugural Distinguished Educator Award to Neena B. Schwartz, Deering Professor of Neurobiology and Physiology and Director of the Center for Reproductive Science at Northwestern University. This honor is bestowed in recognition of her exceptional achievements as an educator in the discipline of endocrinology and metabolism.

Neena is a native of Baltimore who has spent most of her research and teaching career in the greater Chicago area. After obtaining her undergraduate degree from Goucher College, Neena completed her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physiology at Northwestern University. Her first faculty position was at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where she rose to the rank of Professor before moving to Northwestern University in 1974 as Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences. Neena founded the Program in Reproductive Research, now the Center for Reproductive Science, in 1980, and developed the program into a premier training site for students and young investigators interested in reproductive endocrinology.

Neena has had a distinguished and productive research career and has made many seminal contributions toward understanding the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis and its control. Her early studies on the rat estrous cycle established many of the basic tenets of cyclical changes in gonadotropin secretion upon which our current views of the HPA axis are based. Much of Neena’s research has focused on the issue of differential regulation of pituitary FSH and LH secretion, an area in which her laboratory remains very actively engaged. It was this interest that led her and the late Cornelia Channing to describe a nonsteroidal feedback factor from the ovary involved in controlling the secondary FSH surge, and Neena’s laboratory went on to make many important contributions to the study of ovarian inhibin. These research accomplishments have been recognized by numerous awards and honors, including the Carl Hartman Award from the Society for the Study of Reproduction and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. Neena has also been widely recognized for her leadership and service contributions. She is a past president of The Endocrine Society, the Society for the Study of Reproduction, and the Association for Women in Science. She was the recipient of the Williams Distinguished Service Award from The Endocrine Society in 1985, and just this year was elected to serve on the board of directors of the Association for the Advancement of Science.

Although one could go on at great length about Neena’s scholarship and service contributions, the Distinguished Educator Award recognizes Neena’s excellence in the teaching and mentoring of young endocrinologists. In a classroom setting, she has taught endocrinology courses to thousands of undergraduate, medical, graduate, and postgraduate students over the past 45 years. This began with her involvement in the medical endocrinology course at the University of Illinois Medical School and continued at Northwestern University, where she taught undergraduate vertebrate endocrinology and graduate mammalian reproduction. More recently, Neena has tackled the formidable task of teaching human reproduction to nonscience majors, and this course has rapidly become one of the most popular on campus. Neena effectively challenges her students to go beyond textbooks and to acquire critical thinking skills, and a major component of her human reproduction course involves helping these students to research, critique, and present topics found in the recent popular press. At the other end of the spectrum, Neena has been very actively involved in continuing education and has organized several outstanding courses for the Northwestern Alumni Association. Her formal teaching efforts were recognized in 1995 by the Northwestern Alumni Excellence in Teaching Award.

Perhaps the biggest impact that Neena has had as an endocrine educator is in her role as a mentor. Neena has helped dozens of undergraduate students begin their research careers in her laboratory and has trained a long list of Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows. Particularly impressive is the number of Neena’s trainees who have remained within the field of reproductive endocrinology, both within and outside of academics. Her mentoring has never been limited to her own students, and Neena has always taken an active interest in the scientific progress of all those around her. This might initially take the form of a critically insightful comment during a student’s presentation that throws them into sheer panic, but it is always followed with a thoughtful discussion of the issues and a willingness on Neena’s part to be involved in the student’s training, research, and career. Neena strongly believes in learning by doing, and she therefore developed a "Minisymposium in Reproductive Science," now in its 20th year, that is run by trainees and is for trainees. This symposium has served as the initial presentation forum for hundreds of students, instilling in them a confidence in their data and their speaking abilities that has made their subsequent presentations at national meetings that much more enjoyable. Students are not the only targets of Neena’s attention, and she has always been very actively involved in the mentoring of younger faculty, both within and outside of Northwestern University. She has been particularly effective at sharing both responsibility and recognition with younger faculty colleagues. In testimony to Neena’s considerable mentoring skills, she was honored with the Women in Endocrinology Mentor Award in 1997.

As is true of most great educators, Neena teaches by example. She is an outstanding role model and is a valued colleague and friend to many. For her dedication and excellence to education in the field of endocrinology, it is indeed a pleasure to award the Distinguished Educator Award of The Endocrine Society to Neena Schwartz, a remarkable scientist and an even more remarkable person.

Kelly E. Mayo, Ph.D.


    Citation for the Distinguished Physician Award of The Endocrine Society to Dr. John P. Bilezikian
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The Endocrine Society is pleased to name Dr. John P. Bilezikian as the first recipient of the new Endocrine Society Distinguished Physician Award. Dr. Bilezikian is Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and is Chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Director of the Metabolic Bone Diseases Program at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

Dr. Bilezikian graduated from Harvard College, magna cum laude, in 1965 and from Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons in 1969. He completed four years of residency training including the Chief Medical Residency of the Medical Service at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Dr. Bilezikian received his training in Endocrinology and in Metabolic Bone Diseases at the NIH, where he served as a Clinical Associate in the Mineral Metabolism Branch under the tutelage of Dr. Gerald Aurbach. He then returned to the College of Physicians & Surgeons to launch his distinguished career as a physician scientist.

Dr. Bilezikian’s scholarly and highly productive research career encompasses both basic science and clinical investigation. He has made important contributions to the study of hormone action and signal transduction. He has studied the ß-adrenergic receptor, cAMP, and guanine regulatory proteins. He has explored mechanisms of PTH action and has demonstrated important actions of PTH on the vasculature and the heart. Dr. Bilezikian is widely acclaimed for his clinical studies of primary hyperparathyroidism and osteoporosis. He leads the largest and longest prospective study ever conducted of primary hyperparathyroidism. He has defined the modern clinical profile of this relatively common disease and has provided unique insights into the natural history and treatment of this disorder. He was the first to show that a new class of pharmaceuticals, the calcimimmetics, have significant effects on the clinical manifestations of primary hyperparathyroidism. This study has major implications for the development of new pharmacological approaches to the treatment of primary hyperparathyroidism. Dr. Bilezikian and his group have made important contributions to the study and treatment of osteoporosis in both women and men and also in patients following organ transplantation. He has pioneered the clinical development of the bisphosphonates as efficacious agents in the treatment of osteoporosis, hypercalcemia, and other disorders of calcium metabolism. He has demonstrated the therapeutic potential of PTH as a novel therapy for osteoporosis in men. Ongoing studies are defining the clinical, histomorphometric, and genetic features of osteoporosis in men. Dr. Bilezikian’s publications, which number over 280, speak to his productivity as an investigator as well as his demand as an author of many reference sources in the fields of endocrinology and metabolic bone disease.

Dr. Bilezikian belongs to a number of professional societies including the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, of which he served as president in 1996, and the International Society of Clinical Densitometry, of which he is president-elect. He is an active member of The Endocrine Society and serves on the International Planning Committee of the International Congress of Endocrinology. He also belongs to the American Federation for Clinical Research, American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, International Bone and Mineral Society, American Heart Association, and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American College of Endocrinology. Dr. Bilezikian is currently Associate Editor of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism and of the Journal of Clinical Densitometry. In the past, he served as Associate Editor for Endocrinology. He has edited two definitive books, The Parathyroids (1994) and Principles of Bone Biology (1996). Both books received the Doody Award for excellence in medical publishing. He is also Associate Editor of Principles and Practice of Endocrinology and Metabolism. Dr. Bilezikian has served on numerous NIH Study Sections including General Medicine B, Orthopedics, Cardiovascular B, and the NIAMS Special Review Group. He chaired the NIH Consensus Development Panel on Optimal Calcium Intake in 1994 and currently serves on the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also on the Subspecialty Board of Endocrinology and Metabolism of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Bilezikian heads a prominent Division of Endocrinology and directs a productive Metabolic Bone Diseases Program at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. He is responsible for the training of a large number of endocrinologists, many of whom have moved on to their own prominent positions as physician scientists. Dr. Bilezikian is highly esteemed as a colleague and teacher at the College of Physicians & Surgeons and currently serves as Associate Chair for Education in the Department of Medicine. On the national and international level, he continues to be a major spokesperson for the field of metabolic bone diseases. The Endocrine Society Distinguished Physician Award is a fitting tribute to Dr. Bilezikian as a clinical investigator, scholar, teacher, editor, and leader.

Sharon L. Wardlaw


    Citation for the 1998 Richard E. Weitzman Memorial Award of The Endocrine Society to Dr. David J. Mangelsdorf
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The Endocrine Society is delighted to bestow the 1998 Richard E. Weitzman Award to David J. Mangelsdorf, Ph.D. This award honors outstanding research achievements in the field of endocrinology and metabolism by an exceptionally promising young investigator. Dr. Mangelsdorf is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Assistant Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

David has established himself as a leader in the field of molecular endocrinology through his pioneering studies on hormonal signaling through intracellular nuclear receptors. David’s work has been consistently marked by originality and innovation that has helped to redirect our thinking of lipid regulation of gene expression. Most importantly, David’s work is marked by enthusiasm for Science, a generosity of ideas, and a sense of humor from which no one is immune. Much of the innovation from this work has come from David’s deliberate choice of nonsteroidal receptors as model systems. His focus over the last ten years has included analysis of vitamin A, vitamin D, and thyroid hormone action. Most recently, he has redirected his interest toward the role of nuclear receptors in regulation of lipid metabolism via nonhormonal regulator lipids such as cholesterol and other derivatives of the mevalonic pathway.

David received his B.S. with honors from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, and his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1987, conducting his research in the laboratory of Dr. Mark Hausler in the Department of Biochemistry. His first authored paper focused on the identification of specific high-affinity binding sites for retinoic acid, which provided David his first exposure to nuclear receptor signaling. The bulk of the work during that time (including his next 9 research papers) centered upon the action of vitamin D and the purification of the avian and mammalian receptors for this hormone, culminating in the cloning of this receptor in 1987. Interestingly, this paper was co-authored by last year’s recipient of the Richard E. Weitzman Award, Dr. Donald McDonnell. The cloning of the receptor eventually led investigators to identify the genetic basis for two important diseases, vitamin D-resistant rickets and osteoporosis.

With this work as a foundation, I had the honor to receive David first as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a staff scientist in my laboratory at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, where he continued to pursue his interest in nuclear receptor signaling. David arrived during a time of much excitement as we were completing a manuscript on the characterization of the first of the retinoic acid receptors. While it would have been natural for David to work on this project, he preferred to strike out on a riskier route to identify new members of the burgeoning nuclear receptor superfamily and to develop technology that might lead to the identification of new vertebrate hormones. This project ran into immediate complications as a consequence of the cloning of too many new receptors that could not all be simultaneously characterized. After a great deal of thought and discussion, David chose one of these receptors to focus a full-blown effort, placing the others on a back burner awaiting their chance should the first one fail. However, the first receptor that David chose was retinoid X receptor (RXR), and he never looked back. In many ways, David’s discovery and characterization of RXR helped to transform the field by providing a new crucial member of the nuclear receptor superfamily that is both ancient in its origins and key to understanding the newly evolving area at that time, of signaling by the nonsteroidal hormones. Indeed, RXR has come to be known as a central player in the nuclear receptor superfamily by serving as a unique heterodimerization partner for the Vitamin D receptor, thyroid hormone receptor, retinoic acid receptor, and peroxisome proliferator activator receptor. As part of his initial characterization of RXR, David observed and responded to a novel presumed metabolite of all-trans-retinoic acid. While attempting to identify a natural ligand for RXR, David helped to perfect a high throughput screening technique that has since been widely adopted for discovery of new receptor ligands. His work on RXR lead to his co-discovery of the vitamin A metabolite, 9-cis retinoic acid, as the natural ligand which was the first hormone to be discovered for a nuclear receptor in over twenty years. He also contributed to the finding that RXR was required as a dimer partner to permit other receptors to bind and induce expression of their target genes. These findings establish RXR as both a receptor and a master regulator of several important endocrine pathways. The high risk project that David had set out upon only a few years earlier had paid off in a major discovery that was to open an entirely new chapter in nuclear receptor signaling. Since that initial publication, more than 1,000 papers have been published on the subject of RXR and its heterodimeric partners and thus, the risky project initiated ten years ago is still having its impact felt today.

In addition to his strong personal motivation, one of David’s most salient characteristics as a postdoctoral fellow and staff scientist at the Salk Institute was his interest and commitment to other members of the laboratory. This was nondiscriminatory, including technicians, undergraduates, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. Some of these interactions led to scientific collaboration, but more typically, David (Davo Mango as he was known to us) took other people and their lives seriously. In addition, anyone who has known Davo for some time is well aware of his mischievous sense of humor and his ability to turn an expression that will lighten a serious moment or diffuse an occasional tense moment. As the goal of the postdoctoral fellowship is to receive training and then to move on, it was with a combination of joy and sadness that we wished Davo bon voyage in building the next chapter of his career at the University of Texas Southwestern, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Assistant Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. I suspect that Al Gilman (the Chairman of David’s current department) did not realize what a special individual he was recruiting.

After moving to Dallas in 1993, David began studying a new orphan nuclear receptor termed liver X receptor (LXR), as well as continuing his work on vitamin A receptor signaling pathways. He hit the ground running, and his work has helped to pioneer the area of orphan nuclear receptor signaling. Most recently, his laboratory has shown that LXR, through its unique heterodimeric interaction with RXR, mediates a novel oxysterol signaling pathway. Using the ligand screening assay, he has shown that certain metabolites of cholesterol are specific ligands for the LXR receptor. In vivo studies in his laboratory have extended this hypothesis by showing that mice lacking the LXR gene are unable to properly regulate dietary cholesterol metabolism. These studies identify LXR as a sensor for dietary cholesterol and thus, an important mediator of cholesterol metabolism.

In other studies, Dr. Mangelsdorf has discovered methaprene, a widely used pesticide that is an analog of an insect juvenile GH, is a potent nonretinoid activator of RXR. This work suggests that a nuclear receptor pathway similar to that for vitamin A may be operating in insects for lipophilic regulators such as juvenile hormone. Such studies may assist in the development of highly specific, environmentally friendly pesticides that target these receptors as agonist or antagonistic drugs. In addition, this work cautions as to the widespread use of insecticides that, by virtue of their action, may inadvertently mimic the action of vertebrate hormones.

It is clear that the elucidation of nuclear receptor signaling pathway will help to open a variety of avenues for therapeutic exploration in a number of disease states. Dr. Mangelsdorf is already an inventor on several patents that are licensed to the pharmaceutical industry and that have led to the discovery of several new drugs. One of these drugs, a 9-cis retinoic acid analog, is in clinical trials as an anticancer agent. The fundamental biological findings of Dr. Mangelsdorf and his colleagues should provide a solid basis for further advances in pharmacology and therapeutics.

In addition to his laboratory work, Davo’s leadership and enthusiasm have led him to be a frequent organizer of meetings on retinoids and nuclear receptor signaling, and a frequent speaker at symposia. It is this combination of his ability to organize, articulate, and consistently generate new findings that makes David one of the true young leaders of the field. For all of this, it is not surprising that David has won numerous awards for his work. These include the First DeWitt S. Goodman Award from the American Association for Cancer Research in 1996 and the John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics in 1997. The Endocrine Society is proud to present the 1998 Richard E. Weitzman Award to Dr. David Mangelsdorf in recognition of a truly remarkable and distinguished career.

Ronald M. Evans, Ph.D.



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