During this Food for Thought presentation, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Gill Chair Richard DiMarchi discussed the revolutionary advancements in pharmaceuticals that are reshaping the landscape of obesity and its related diseases. Following his presentation, Professor DiMarchi participated in a moderated Q&A session with College Executive Dean and Professor of Physics Rick Van Kooten.
Presentation Description: The obesity epidemic and associated comorbidities represent a medicinal challenge that warrants broad molecular diversity. Professor DiMarchi’s laboratory has pioneered the recruitment of endogenous hormones and physiological mechanisms optimized for pharmacological purposes to address it. The discovery of single-molecule, multi-mechanism incretins that they pioneered provides breakthrough efficacy in lowering body weight. The integrated pharmacology of these peptides, with endocrine proteins and nuclear hormones, provides a library of drug candidates that promises even greater clinical outcomes and therapy for diseases that have historically proven to be intractable to treat as obesity once constituted.
Speaker Biography: Professor Richard DiMarchi is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He is a former Group Vice President at Lilly and later Novo. His contributions pertain to the discovery and development of Humalog®, rGlucagon®, Forteo®, and Evista®. His research includes discovery of peptides transforming the treatment of diabetes and obesity. He is co-inventor on 100+ U.S. patents and co-author to 250+ scientific publications. He was identified as a top-five translation researcher by Nature Biotechnology. Since 2003, he has co-founded eight successful biotech companies (Ambrx, Marcadia, Calibrium, MB2, Assembly, MBX, Ghrelco and Bluewater).
Moderator Biography: Rick Van Kooten, who first joined IU Bloomington as an assistant professor in 1993, became the executive dean of the IUB College of Arts and Sciences on July 1, 2019. Before this appointment, he served for five years as chair of the Department of Physics and four years as the IU Bloomington vice provost for research, working across the campus as a passionate advocate for scholarly activity. During his tenure, research infrastructure for intelligent systems engineering was established, and funding for humanities research expanded significantly, as the campus secured grants from many sources, including the Luce and Mellon foundations and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In other areas, Van Kooten steered two of IU's major 21st century initiatives, the Emerging Areas of Research and the IUB components of the Grand Challenges initiatives. The Emerging Areas of Research program has led to new centers of excellence in human and machine learning, quantum engineering and science, and sustainable food systems. The Grand Challenges are a five-year, over $200-million research initiative to address the big issues facing Indiana, such as environmental resilience, precision health, and addressing the addictions crisis.
While growing up in Canada, Van Kooten was most interested in science. He earned his undergraduate degree in engineering science from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. He was then named scientific associate at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) and then research scientist at the University of Hamburg. He has written or co-written more than 750 publications, most in the area of particle physics. Van Kooten has also chaired the Fermi National Laboratory Physics Advisory Committee, as well as serving on a committee that set out the current long-term plan for particle physics in the U.S.
Негізгі бет Food for Thought | Discovery of Transformative Rx to Treat Obesity and Related Diseases
Пікірлер