September 05, 2002
Joseph L. Goldstein Is Elected HHMI Trustee
Joseph L. Goldstein, a noted scientist who shared the 1985 Nobel
Prize for discoveries related to cholesterol metabolism, has been
elected a Trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He will
become one of 10 trustees of the Institute, a medical research
organization with scientists throughout the United States and a grants
program that supports science education and select international
researchers.
Goldstein, Chairman of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, has long
been associated with the Institute as a member and chair of its Medical
Advisory Board (MAB). Named to succeed Goldstein as chair of
HHMI’s Medical Advisory Board is Craig B. Thompson, a cancer
biologist who serves as Scientific Director of the Abramson Family
Cancer Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.
Goldstein, 62, received his medical degree from UT Southwestern in
1966, where he became first interested in genetics and in a research
career. After stints at Massachusetts General Hospital—where he met
long-term scientific collaborator Michael S. Brown—and the National
Institutes of Health, Goldstein returned to UT Southwestern in 1972 to
head the fledgling division of medical genetics. Working together,
Goldstein and Brown began their collaborative research on a human
genetic disease—familial hypercholesterolemia. This collaboration led
them to unravel the mechanisms of regulated cholesterol import into
human cells. This work became the basis for the 1985 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine. Their laboratory continues to focus on
cholesterol regulation and its role in disease.
A leader in academic medicine, Goldstein has had an impact felt well
beyond UT Southwestern and his specific area of research. As an
outgrowth of his own experiences as a physician and a researcher, he
has been an advocate for increasing support for physician-scientists
who conduct patient-oriented research. With encouragement from
Goldstein, HHMI recently conducted an investigator competition focused
on identifying a dozen such researchers.
Goldstein has served as a member of the Institute’s Medical
Advisory Board since 1985, becoming its chair in 1995; he also served
on the Scientific Review Board from 1978 to 1984. Goldstein is Trustee
of The Rockefeller University, chair of the awards jury for the Albert
Lasker Medical Research Awards, and a scientific adviser to numerous
academic institutions.
In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Goldstein and Brown have
received some of the most prestigious scientific research awards. These
include the Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of
Sciences, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Louisa Gross
Horwitz Prize and the Lasker Award. Both he and Brown also received the
National Medal of Science.
A native of Kingstree, South Carolina, Goldstein received a
bachelor’s degree from Washington and Lee University. He is the
Regental Professor of Medicine of the University of Texas and holds the
Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Sciences at UT Southwestern.
Goldstein is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a
foreign member of the Royal Society (London).
As the new chair of the Institute’s Medical Advisory Board,
Thompson also has a long association with the Institute, both as a
scientist and as a member of the MAB. Thompson was first appointed an
associate Hughes investigator while a member of the University of
Michigan in 1987. He became director of the Knapp Center at the
University of Chicago and a Hughes Investigator in 1993, resigning six
years later to assume the directorship of the Abramson Institute.
Thompson’s lab focuses on the role of genes that regulate
programmed cell death, and their potential use in treating cancer.
Thompson, 49, earned a bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College
and studied at Dartmouth Medical School, before receiving a medical
degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. He trained at Peter
Bent Brigham Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, both in
Boston, before serving as a physician at the National Naval Medical
Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He then completed a fellowship in
hematology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle,
Washington.
As a scientific and philanthropic organization, HHMI invests more
than $440 million annually in biomedical research, employing
approximately 330 of the nation’s most innovative scientists at
some 70 universities and research centers around the nation. As an
adjunct to its investigator program, HHMI is also constructing a
research campus on a 281-acre parcel of land in Loudoun County,
Virginia. The Janelia Farm research campus is expected to open in
2006.
Through its complementary grants program, the Institute disburses
more than $100 million a year on a variety of initiatives to enhance
the teaching of science, beginning at the earliest grade levels through
doctoral fellowships, and to support career development among the most
promising potential young scientists. Through its International
Research Scholars program, HHMI supports the research of select
scientists in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Canada, Australia and
elsewhere.
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