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Dr. Kahn is President of the Joslin Diabetes Center, in Boston, Massachusetts, and is the preeminent investigator of insulin signal transduction and mechanisms of altered signaling in disease. His laboratory has produced multiple seminal observations regarding the insulin receptor kinase, its substrates, the molecular components of the insulin signaling network, and their alterations in disease. This body of work has revolutionized the field. Since the initial discovery by Dr. Kahn's laboratory that the insulin receptor is an insulin-stimulated enzyme with protein tyrosine kinase activity, the Kahn laboratory has focused attention on how this early signal is converted to the final effects of insulin on metabolism and growth, how insulin signaling is altered in insulin resistant states such as type 2 diabetes, what the impact of genetics is on these functions, and how knowledge gleaned through these studies can be translated into new treatment methods for diabetes patients.
Dr. Kahn has received numerous honors and awards, including the highest scientific awards of the American Diabetes Association, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, International Diabetes Federation, the American Federation of Clinical Research, and the Endocrine Society of the United States. In 1999, Dr. Kahn received two prestigious national honors - election to membership in the National Academy of Sciences and election to the Institute of Medicine, for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. The Newton, MA, resident holds an honorary D.Sc. from the University of Paris.
Dr. Kahn also recently chaired the Congressionally-established Diabetes Research Working Group of diabetes experts that spent a year developing recommendations about Federal priorities for diabetes research to help reverse the diabetes epidemic. In a report to a U.S. Senate subcommittee in October, Dr. Kahn reported that the death rate from diabetes has increased by 30 percent since 1980, affecting an estimated 16 million Americans and killing one American every three minutes. The DRWG recommended that an increase of $385 million over present National Institutes of Health funding be allocated for diabetes research for the coming year, and a further increase over the next four years to meet the challenges and opportunities available.
Dr. Kahn received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Louisville. After training in internal medicine at Washington University's Barnes Hospital, he worked at the National Institutes of Health for 11 years. There he rose to head the Section on Cellular and Molecular Physiology of the Diabetes Branch of NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. | 