Dr. Gordon C. Weir, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chair at the Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation at Joslin will be giving a lecture titled, The Challenge of Beta Cell Replacement Therapy: From its Beginnings in St. Louis for the inaugural Philip E. Cryer, MD Lecture on September 3 during Medicine Grand Rounds in The Malvern B. Clopton Amphitheatre.
Dr. Weir Co-Heads Joslin’s Section on Islet Cell and Regenerative Biology and is Director of its NIH-supported Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center. Dr. Weir completed his medical degree at Harvard Medical School and his residency training at University Hospital in Cleveland, OH.
Dr. Philip E. Cryer, a native of central Illinois, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University and an Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of Northwestern University Medical School, came to St. Louis as an intern in medicine at Barnes Hospital in 1965. He completed a fellowship in endocrinology and metabolism, and served two years at the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland before returning to Washington University as chief resident in medicine. He joined the Washington University faculty in 1971.
Dr. Cryer assumed increasing operational responsibility for Washington University’s General Clinical Research Center (GCRC), starting in 1973, and continued as Program Director of the GCRC for nearly thirty years through six consecutive, competitive renewal applications to the NIH from 1978 through 2006. In 1985, he became Director of the newly renamed Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. In 1995, he was named the second Irene E. and Michael M. Karl Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism in Medicine.
A clinical investigator, Dr. Cryer studied for more than three decades the physiology of glucose counterregulation – the mechanisms that normally prevent or rapidly correct hypoglycemia and its pathophysiology, and the relationship of the latter to clinical hypoglycemia in diabetes. His research was recognized by the Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement of the American Diabetes Association (1994), an honorary doctorate from the University of Copenhagen (2000), the Claude Bernard Medal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (2001), and a Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award from NIH (2001-2010). He is routinely listed in Best Doctors in America and America’s Top Doctors.
He is the only person in the history of the American Diabetes Association to receive its Banting Medal (1994), to serve as Editor-in-Chief of its leading scientific journal, Diabetes (1992-1996), and to be elected its President (1996-1997).
Dr. Cryer has authored more than 400 articles or book chapters and has been a visiting professor to medical schools throughout the world. He has served on the editorial boards of many prominent journals, among them the Journal of Clinical Investigation, American Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism.