Ralph DeFronzo, Diabetes Div Chief University of Texas to speak at Diabetes Summit April 2012 Boston

March 7, 2012 - PRLog -- Ralph A. DeFronzo, MD, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Diabetes Division at the University of Texas Health Science Center and the Audie L. Murphy Memorial VA Hospital in San Antonio, Texas), will be giving a presentation entitled “Treatment of T2DM Should be Based on Established Pathophysiologic Abnormalities” at the 2nd Diabetes Summit to be held on April 19-20, 2012 in Boston, MA by GTC.

Dr. DeFronzo is a graduate of Yale University (BS) and Harvard Medical School (MD) and did his training in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.  He completed fellowships in endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health and Baltimore City Hospitals and in Nephrology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  Subsequently, he joined the faculty at the Yale University School of Medicine (1975-88) as an Assistant/Associate Professor.  From 1988 to present Dr. DeFronzo has been Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Diabetes Division at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.  He also serves as the Deputy Director of the Texas Diabetes Institute.

His major interests focus on the pathogenesis and treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus and the central role of insulin resistance in the metabolic-cardiovascular cluster of disorders known collectively as the Insulin Resistance Syndrome.  Using the euglycemic insulin clamp technique in combination with radioisotope turnover methodology, limb catheterization, indirect calorimetry, and muscle biopsy, he has helped to define the biochemical and molecular disturbances responsible for insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes mellitus.

For his work in this area, Dr. DeFronzo received the prestigious Lilly Award (1987) by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the Banting Lectureship (1988) by the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Novartis Award (2003) for outstanding clinical investigation world wide and many other national and international awards.  He also is the recipient of the ADA’s Albert Renold Award (2002) for lifetime commitment to the training of young diabetes investigators.  Dr. DeFronzo received the Banting Award from the ADA (2008) and the Claude Bernard Award from the EASD (2008).  These represent the highest scientific achievement awards given by the American and European Diabetes Associations, respectively.  In 2008 Dr. DeFronzo also received the Italian Diabetes Mentor Prize and the Philip Bondy Lecture at Yale.  With more than 550 articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals, Dr. DeFronzo is a distinguished clinician, teacher, and investigator who has been an invited speaker at major national and international conferences on diabetes mellitus.

With more than 400 drug candidates for diabetes in active development and in light of the recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance to assess cardiovascular risk in clinical trials, the burden to develop novel drugs is greater and the barrier for success has become higher than ever. What will be the next block-buster drug target for T1DM and T2DM? How does the recent FDA guidance affect our approach to develop new medications for diabetes? How do different size companies adapt the best strategy to be competitive in this field?

Come and join other diabetes experts at GTC’s 2nd Diabetes Summit and hear key thought-leader's opinions to these questions and many more. This important meeting will be held on April 19-20, 2012 in Boston, MA. The conference will bring together the leading experts on diabetes from both industry and academia to discuss novel targets for diabetes, lessons to learn from current clinical drug development, and business strategies and opportunities under the current regulatory landscape.

The 2nd Diabetes Summit will consist of 2 tracks:

5th Diabetes Drug Discovery and Development
2nd Diabetes Partnering & Deal Making

For more information, please visit www.gtcbio.com