Diabetes patients worldwide stand to benefit – the new Diabetes and Metabolism Clinical Research Center has opened under the direction of celebrated diabetes specialist, Prof Derek LeRoith. Formerly of the NIH in Washington and the Mt Sinai Medical Center in NY, Prof LeRoith will lead the center on its special mission: to conduct clinically-oriented investigations that will help cure disease
Prof Derek LeRoith, a celebrated specialist in endocrinology and diabetes, has arrived in Israel to head the first center of excellence to be established in Rambam’s new Legacy Heritage Clinical Research Institute: the Diabetes and Metabolism Clinical Research Center. Prof LeRoith has directed the diabetes centers in the Institutes of National Health in Washington and at the Mt Sinai Medical Center in NY.
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From Right to Left – Prof. Derek LeRoith, Prof. Rafael Beyar – Director and CEO of Rambam Health Care Campus, Prof. Karl Skorecki – Director of Medical & Research Development, Adv. Shirin Herzog and Prof. Michael Aviram at the diabetes center Inauguration. Photo credit: Pioter Fliter |
Like all other centers planned as part of the Legacy Institute, which is directed by Prof. Michael Aviram, the Diabetes and Metabolism Center will be devoted to understanding and treating disease. Unique to such centers in Israel, all researchers here will be top notch medical doctors. Recruited from around the world, as well as within Israel, these institute members will cooperate with their peers at the Rambam Health Care Campus, the Rappaport Center for Family Medicine and the Technion-Israel Institute for Technology. They will receive generous financial support for their lab equipment and work.
“Leading the Legacy center represents a new challenge for me, professionally and personally,” says Prof LeRoith. “It will give me the chance to develop an internationally-recognized center that combines the exceptional expertise of the Technion, Rappaport and Rambam. On an individual level, it allows me to make aliyah, after 31 years of wanting to. For me, this decision involved a little Zionism, a little mishugas and a lot of medicine.”
Prof LeRoith’s immediate plans for the center involve getting his own research program up and running. For more than five years, Prof LeRoith has been working to understand why patients with obesity and Type 2 diabetes have an increased susceptibility to all types of cancers, as well as an unusually high mortality rate in connection with the disease. “The models we’re created have given us a start in illuminating why this occurs,” he says.
“My long-range plans are to recruit three or four other investigators in the diabetes arena,” continues Prof LeRoith, “and to develop a center that will be internationally recognized in diabetes research. This center will conduct research that will, first and foremost, have direct impact on the lives of patients.”
“Prof LeRoith is considered a world name in diabetes research. At Rambam he will coordinate diabetes research at the highest level, and like other Legacy researchers, will combine clinical work with basic research,” says Legacy Institute Director Prof Michael Aviram. “Each researcher here will work on projects that are relevant to patients and their treatment.”
The diabetes center, inaugurated on October 10, 2010, is the first Legacy center to open. Legacy centers devoted to clinical research on cancer, neuroscience and cardio-vascular disease will open in the near future.