Microbial Influences in Cardio–Metabolic Diseases

Organizers

John Hambor, PhD

Boehringer Ingelheim

Dr. John Hambor is currently a Director of Research Beyond Borders at Boehringer Ingelheim where he coordinates a strategic postdoctoral research program focused on developing new therapeutic concepts in collaboration with academic investigators. Previously, Dr. Hambor was a consultant with the Cell Therapy Group, specializing in stem cell-based drug discovery. Prior to serving as CEO of CellDesign, a developer of next generation stem cell technologies, he contributed 17 years of research at Pfizer where he identified and validated new drug targets in the areas of inflammation and immunology and developed stem cell-based assays for drug efficacy and safety studies. Dr. Hambor received both a BA and MS degree in Microbiology from Miami University of Ohio, and earned a PhD in Pathology from Case Western Reserve University, followed by postdoctoral studies at Yale University in the Department of Immunobiology. He has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Connecticut College since 2000 where he teaches Immunology. He also serves as a member on the board of directors for the Connecticut Veterans Administration Research and Education Foundation and on the advisory committee for the Connecticut Regenerative Medicine Research Fund.

Erick Young, PhD

Boehringer Ingelheim

Erick R. R. Young obtained his PhD in synthetic bioorganic chemistry from The Pennsylvania State University and completed post-doctoral studies in natural product synthesis at The Ohio State University. Upon joining Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in 1998 he served as a small molecule research project leader for immunology and cardiometabolic diseases. Over time, he became increasingly involved in the generation of new target concepts and championing novel therapeutic modalities for the enablement of new target class space, areas where he has made significant contributions to the BI research strategy and portfolio. He is currently the Director of External Innovation for the newly formed Research Beyond Borders division of BI where his primary focus is the conception, identification and enablement of new therapeutic mechanisms and disease indications outside the organizations current scope or capabilities.

Nilufer Seth, PhD

Pfizer Inc

Nilufer Seth is a scientist in the Emerging Science Group in the Inflammation and Immunology Research Unit at Pfizer. She received her PhD from Medical College of Augusta in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. She then joined the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for her post-doctoral training where her research focused on the design and development of novel approaches to ex vivo identify and analyze antigen-specific CD4 T cells subsets in human diseases and mouse models of autoimmunity. She studied antigen specific T cells from HIV and HCV infected individuals as well as in the NOD mouse model of Type 1 Diabetes. She joined the Department of Inflammation and Immunology at Wyeth where she worked on small and large molecule therapeutic programs targeting immune cells and inflammatory cytokines. Currently at Pfizer she is leading and developing the microbiome strategy, efforts and projects. Her focus is on developing medicines that will reshape the treatment of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases by harnessing strategies and pathways used by the human gut microbiota to maintain barrier and immune homeostasis.

Sonya Dougal, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Caitlin McOmish, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

Henrik Bjørn Nielsen, PhD

Clinical-Microbiomics A/S

H. Bjørn Nielsen, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Clinical-Microbiomics A/S, has since 2008 been a frontrunner in the field of microbiome research. His participation in the MetaHit consortium led to a series of important scientific papers describing the human gut microbiome, including his pioneering work on co-abundance binning of metagenomics data into metagenomic species, bacteriophages, and other mobile genetic elements. This year Henrik has authored 4 papers published in Nature journals, including a three-pronged association study that links microbiome, serum metabolome, and clinical data in pre-diabetic Danes, and a study that reports on the largest metatranscriptomics to date. At Clinical-Microbiomics H. Bjørn heads innovation with clients and the continued adaptation and development of new analysis concepts and methods.

Martin J. Blaser, MD

New York University Langone Medical Center

Martin J. Blaser is the Muriel and George Singer Professor of Medicine, Professor of Microbiology, and Director of the Human Microbiome Program at the NYU School of Medicine. He served as Chair of the Department of Medicine at NYU from 2000–2012. A physician and microbiologist, Dr. Blaser is interested in understanding the relationships we have with our persistently colonizing bacteria. His work over 30 years focused on particular organisms, including Campylobacter species and Helicobacter pylori, which also are model systems for understanding the interactions of residential bacteria with their human hosts. Over the last 15 years, he has been actively studying the relationship of the human microbiome with health and with such important diseases as asthma, obesity, diabetes, and allergies. Over the course of his career, Dr. Blaser has served as the advisor for a large number of students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty. He served as President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute, Chair of the Advisory Board for Clinical Research of the National Institutes of Health, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy for Arts and Sciences. He holds 28 U.S. patents relating to his research, and has authored over 550 original articles. Recently, he wrote "Missing Microbes," a book targeted to general audiences. He now is serving as the Chair of the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria.

Patrice D. Cani, PhD

Université Catholique de Louvain, LDRI
website

Rachel Carmody, PhD

Harvard University

Rachel Carmody is an Assistant Professor in Human Evolutionary Biology and Co-Director of the Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Laboratory at Harvard University. She received her PhD in Human Evolutionary Biology from Harvard in 2012, and recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Microbiology & Immunology at UCSF with Dr. Peter Turnbaugh. Dr. Carmody's research investigates the biological, behavioral, and environmental determinants of dietary energy gain, with special interests in the energetic consequences of food processing and the contributions of the gut microbiome to energy metabolism. Her past studies have shown that the adoption of cooking by human ancestors would have transformed the energy landscape, helping to support the emergence of costly traits like larger body and brain size despite reductions in tooth and gut size. Her recent research extends this story, showing that consumption of a cooked diet reshapes the gut microbiota in ways relevant to energy gain and the evolution of host-microbial interactions. Dr. Carmody is the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, NIDDK/NIA Keystone Scholarship, and NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award.

Stanley L. Hazen, MD, PhD

Cleveland Clinic

Dr. Hazen received both his PhD in Biophysical Chemistry and Molecular Biology and medical degree at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He then performed his residency in internal medicine and specialty fellowship in endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He has been at the Cleveland Clinic since 1997, where he currently serves as the Chair of the Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute. He is also the Section Head of Preventive Cardiology & Rehabilitation at the Cleveland Clinic, and holds both the Jan Bleeksma Chair in Vascular Cell Biology and Atherosclerosis, and the Leonard Krieger Chair in Preventive Cardiology. Dr Hazen has published over 350 peer reviewed publications, including many in top tier clinical and basic science journals alike. He has been elected as member to honorary clinical and basic science societies including ASCI in 2003, the AAP in 2007, election as a Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2008, and most recently, election to the National Academy of Medicine (2017).

Dr. Hazen's laboratory focuses on understanding mechanisms through which inflammation contributes to diseases such as atherosclerosis. His work is highly innovative, and has led to numerous discoveries in multiple areas of cardiovascular disease research. His discovery of a mechanistic link between gut microbes and cardiovascular disease was an Inaugural recipient of a "Top 10 Clinical Discovery of the Year (2011)" award by the Clinical Research Forum (April, 2012), which is comprised of leadership at NHLBI, academia, and industry. His further studies on the gut microbe–cardiovascular disease connection were recognized by the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association in 2014 as a "2013 top 10 advances in heart disease and stroke science." Dr Hazen today will speak to us about his recent advances on this exciting topic.

Gerald I. Shulman, MD, PhD

Yale University School of Medicine

Dr. Shulman is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the George R. Cowgill Professor of Physiological Chemistry, Medicine and Cellular & Molecular Physiology at Yale University. He is also Co-Director of the Yale Diabetes Research Center. Dr. Shulman completed his undergraduate studies in biophysics at the University of Michigan, and he received his MD and PhD degrees from Wayne State University. Following internship and residency at Duke University Medical Center, he did an endocrinology fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School and additional postdoctoral work in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale before joining the faculty at Harvard Medical School. He was subsequently recruited back to Yale and has remained there ever since. Dr. Shulman has pioneered the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy to non-invasively examine intracellular glucose and fat metabolism in humans that has led to several paradigm shifts in our understanding of type 2 diabetes. Dr. Shulman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and he has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.

Marion Soto, PhD

Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Soto is a senior research fellow in the C. Ronald Kahn Laboratory in the Department of Integrative Physiology and Metabolism at Joslin Diabetes Center. She earned her Ph.D. in Nutrition and Neurobiology in 2014 from AgroParisTech in France. Her research focuses on how type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance in the brain lead to defects in cognition and behavior. Dr. Soto's research interests combine both basic science investigations and translation into clinical research, using several MRI techniques in patients with type 2 diabetes to understand how this pathology affects brain function. In addition to her focus on insulin signaling in the brain, Dr. Soto is interested in the role of the microbiome in the pathogenesis of obesity and metabolic syndrome. Her studies on the interaction between the microbiome, brain, and behavior in mice led her to discover that the microbiota can regulate neurobehavioral abnormalities relevant to obesity and diabetes.

Dan Winer, MD, FRCPC

University Health Network and University of Toronto

Dr. D. Winer is a scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute at the University Health Network (UHN). He is an assistant professor in the Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, and Immunology at the University of Toronto, and a pathologist at UHN. His works, along with his collaborators, have identified a novel and important role for adaptive immunology in the control of metabolic diseases such as obesity, insulin resistance (IR), and type 2 diabetes. Their work was among the first to identify critical roles for T cells and B cells inside visceral adipose tissue in controlling metabolic inflammation and IR, and has helped promote the new field of immunometabolism. More recently, Dr. Winer has identified the immune system in the gut as a new regulator of whole body glucose homeostasis.

Dr. D. Winer is the recipient of several awards including the Benjamin Castleman Award for human pathology research, a Canada Research Chair in immunometabolism, and an Amgen New Investigator award. The Winer laboratory is funded by grants from the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the J.P. Bickell Foundation, the Banting and Best Diabetes Center, the Ontario Ministry of Innovation, and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.