Endocrine Abstracts

Bert W O’Malley

Bert W O’Malley, MD is the Tom Thompson Distinguished Service Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine. A native of Pittsburgh, he has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1959) and an MD from their School of Medicine (1963). He completed his residency at Duke University and spent four years at the National Institute of Health followed by four years serving as the Luscious Birch Professor and the director of the Reproductive Biology Center at Vanderbilt University. He then moved to Baylor as Professor and Chairman of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

O’Malley’s laboratory discovered that steroid hormones and nuclear receptors act on genes to regulate synthesis of messenger RNAs. He then went on to discover the ‘missing link coregulators’ (coactivators/corepressors) that decipher all of the transcriptional instructions in the receptors. Coactivators are ‘master genes’ that have immense regulatory influences on tissue development and physiology because they activate subfamilies of genes in a manner designed to coordinately regulate cell physiology and metabolism and growth. Of course, dysfunctions in coactivators (or corepressors) lead to serious genetic, reproductive, metabolic, or oncogenic disease consequences but can serve new markers for diagnosis and therapeutic targets.

He has published over 600 papers and holds 23 patents in the fields of gene regulation, molecular endocrinology and steroid receptors and transcriptional coactivators. Dr O’Malley is considered the father of Molecular Endocrinology and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He has received over 60 honors and awards for his scientific achievements. He was awarded the National Medal of Science by U.S. President George W Bush in 2008.