Endocrine Abstracts

C Ronald Kahn, Joslin Diabetes Centre, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA Abstract

Dr C Ronald Kahn was born in Louisville, KY and received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Louisville. After training in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital, St Louis, MO, he joined the NIH as a Clinical Associate in the Endocrinology Branch. Over the next 11 years, he rose to become the Head of the Section on Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Diabetes Branch in the National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases. In 1981, Dr’Kahn moved to Boston to become Research Director at the Joslin Diabetes Center; Chief, Diabetes and Metabolism Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital; and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In 1984, he became Professor of Medicine at Harvard and in 1986 was awarded the Mary K Iacocca Professorship. During his tenure, Joslin's research program, grew from $2 million to over $25 million, with a staff of over 200 people. In 1998, he was named Executive Vice President and, in 2000, President and Director of the Joslin Diabetes Center.

Dr Kahn is the pre-eminent investigator of insulin signal transduction and mechanisms of altered signalling in disease. His laboratory has produced multiple seminal observations regarding the insulin receptor kinase, its substrates, the molecular components of the insulin signalling network, and their alterations in disease. This body of work has formed the basis for our contemporary understanding of diabetes and insulin action, and has been more central to work in this field than any discovery of insulin itself.