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5:10 p.m., Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Hynes Convention Center Auditorium
Michael A. Gimbrone, Jr., M.D.
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Born in Buffalo, New York, Michael Gimbrone attended Cornell University, College of Arts and Sciences, receiving his A.B. degree, Summa cum laude in Zoology and With Distinction in All Subjects, in 1965. He then came to Boston to pursue medical studies at the Harvard Medical School, where, as a student, he was introduced to the vascular endothelium by Dr. Ramzi Cotran, who would become his career-long mentor. He conducted Honors Thesis research under Dr. Judah Folkman, graduating with the M.D. degree, Magna cum laude, in 1970. After completing an Internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and a Research Fellowship at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston, he served as a Staff Associate at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He then returned to the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston for residency training in Anatomic Pathology, under Dr. Ramzi Cotran, and subsequently rose through the academic ranks at Harvard Medical School from Instructor, in 1975, to Professor of Pathology, in 1985. In 1976, he established the Vascular Pathophysiology Research Laboratory, which grew to become the Vascular Research Division of the Department of Pathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1985. In 1998, he was named the first Director of the Center for Excellence in Vascular Biology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Throughout his investigative career, Dr. Gimbrone has focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of vascular disease, in particular the role of the endothelial cell in complex processes such as atherosclerosis, thrombosis, inflammation and angiogenesis. While a postdoctoral fellow with Judah Folkman in the early 1970’s, he performed the first proof-of-principle experiments demonstrating the dependence of solid tumor growth on the formation of new blood vessels (“tumor-induced neovascularization”). These widely quoted studies laid the groundwork for the modern field of angiogenesis. He then went on to develop reproducible methods for the in vitro culture of endothelium and smooth muscle from human blood vessels and to systematically apply the tools of modern cell biology and molecular biology to dissect their functions in health and disease. His initial characterization of cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC’s) established the most widely utilized in vitro model for the study of endothelium worldwide. His laboratory initially characterized the cytokine-activated endothelial phenotype and discovered the first examples of inducible endothelial-leukocyte adhesion molecules (E-selectin, VCAM-1), important in inflammation and atherogenesis. Most recently his group has focused on the molecular mechanisms linking biomechanical stimulation and endothelial genetic regulation in atherogenesis. This has led to the discovery of novel “athero-protective genes” that provide potential therapeutic targets for the prevention of heart attacks and strokes. The hallmark of these investigative studies has been the creative application of multidisciplinary approaches to probe the spectrum of function and dysfunction of the vascular endothelium, and the formation of interdisciplinary teams to tackle these problems. He has led, for more than 3 decades, one of the oldest, continuously funded Program Projects sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, devoted to understanding the pathophysiology of the endothelium.
Dr. Gimbrone has published more than 250 research articles, book chapters and reviews in the field of vascular biology. He is a recipient of an Established Investigatorship Award from the American Heart Association and the Warner-Lambert Parke Davis Award in Experimental Pathology (FASEB). He is a Past-President of the American Society for Investigative Pathology, the founding President of the North American Vascular Biology Organization (NAVBO), and has served on the Board of Directors of FASEB (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology), as well as various NIH study sections and national advisory committees. He has received the Basic Research Prize from the American Heart Association, a MERIT Award from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the Cardiovascular Research Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Institute, the Pasarow Award for Research in Cardiovascular Diseases, the J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine (with the late Dr. Judah Folkman), the Earl Benditt Lifetime Achievement Award in Vascular Biology from the North American Vascular Biology Association, the Louis and Artur Lucian Award for Research in Circulatory Diseases from McGill University, the Okamoto Prize in Vascular Research (Kyoto University), the Glorney-Raisbeck Award in Cardiovascular Medicine from the New York Academy of Medicine, and the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Most recently, he has been designated a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association (its highest scientific recognition), and also has received the Rous-Whipple Award of the American Society for Investigative Pathology. He currently is the Ramzi S. Cotran Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and Chairman of the Department of Pathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.
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