Ralph DeFronzo, MD
Professor of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, USA​

Dr. Ralph DeFronzo is the Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Diabetes Division at the University of Texas Health Science Center and the Deputy Director of the Texas Diabetes Institute, San Antonio, Texas.
 
Dr. DeFronzo is a leader in the diabetes field. He is responsible for many of the advances achieved in diabetes over the last 50 years, including developing the concept of insulin resistance, leading the US development of metformin, and discovering a new approach to diabetes treatment that targets glucose reabsorption in the kidneys. His most recent work, along with Dr. Bruno Doiron, has led to a possible cure for diabetes in mice and is being developed for studies in larger animals.
 
Dr. DeFronzo's major interests focus on the pathogenesis and treatment of T2D 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 T2D.
 
Dr. DeFronzo graduated from Yale University with a degree in biology and biochemistry, followed by Harvard Medical School with further studies in endocrinology and nephrology. He holds the Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long Distinguished Chair in Diabetes in the Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio, where he has been on the faculty since 1988. He has received numerous awards, including the Harold Hamm International Prize for Biomedical Research in Diabetes (2017), the Novartis Award at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) as the outstanding clinical investigator worldwide (2005), and the Albert Renold Award from the ADA for the training of more than 200 young diabetes investigators (2002). He is the author of 750 publications dating back to 1967.

 
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