Antoine Kaldany, MD, Scientific Advisor

Antoine Kaldany, M.D, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School is an Internist, Diabetologist and Nephrologist. He is also the Chairman of the Harvard Medical Faculty International Liaison Committee and is responsible for numerous international diabetes care initiatives.

Dr. Kaldany completed his residency at the Deaconess Hospital in 1974, and his fellowship in nephrology and immunology at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital where he spent two additional years in the laboratory of Dr. C. Bernard Carpenter. Subsequently Dr. Kaldany became co-investigator (with Dr. George F. Cahill) and Director of the core immunogenetics laboratory at the Joslin’s Diabetes Research and Training Center, a position he held until 1986. Between 1981 and 1984, Dr. Kaldany served on the Board of Governors of the Joslin Clinic.

Dr. Kaldany became interested in international medicine when he trained a Saudi patient to self administer peritoneal dialysis at home, in Jeddah. His genuine desire to help a handful of such patients has lead to several important projects in the Middle East.

Throughout his career Dr. Kaldany has pursued his hobby to design “better mousetraps” and has secured more than 40 US and International patents for user-friendly medical devices, the most significant being a method patent for antisepsis of indwelling central catheters by embedded on-demand UV light. Dr. Kaldany has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, chapters and monographs.

William V. Tamborlane, MD, Scientific Advisor

Dr. Tamborlane is Professor and Chief of Pediatric Endocrinology at Yale School of Medicine. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the JDRF Mary Tyler Moore and S. Robert Levine, M.D. Excellence in Clinical Research Award in 2006 and 2011, the 2009 Diabetes Technology Society’s Diabetes Technology Leadership Award, the 2010 American Diabetes Association Outstanding Physician Clinician Award, the National Award for Career Achievement and Contributions to Clinical and Translational Science by the Society for Clinical and Translational Science.

Dr. Tamborlane is frequently listed in publications such as America’s Top Doctors, The Best Doctors in America and America’s Top Pediatricians. He has served on the FDA Endocrine Advisory Board and National Board of Directors of the American Diabetes Association and is currently Chair of the Pediatric Diabetes Consortium and Co-Chair (for Pediatric studies) of the Type 1 Diabetes Exchange.

Dr. Tamborlane has published more than 550 original articles, chapters and reviews in the area of diabetes. His current research effort is directed at applying recent advances in insulin pump and glucose monitoring technology towards the development of an “artificial pancreas.”

He is a graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine, where he completed his residency in pediatrics before moving to Yale as a post-doctoral fellow in pediatric endocrinology.

David M. Harlan, MD, Scientific Advisor

Dr. Harlan is currently the William & Doris Krupp Professor of Medicine and Co-Director, Diabetes Center of Excellence, Director, Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center and Chief, Diabetes Division, Department of Medicine University of Massachusetts School of Medicine.

Since 1988, Dr. Harlan has been both a clinical and research diabetologist/endocrinologist with a major commitment to improving our understanding of the biology underlying diabetes and to developing better treatments and management tools. His efforts have spanned from epidemiological studies relating to patient outcomes following pancreas transplantation, to clinical trials (islet transplantation, immunotherapy trials, beta cell imaging, and efforts attempting to promote beta cell regeneration), to animal models of diabetes using non-human primates or mice, to cellular (studying pancreatic beta cells and the islet inflammatory infiltrate underlying T1D), to molecular (gene expression studies, promoter analyses, insulin splice forms).

Dr. Harlan has also assumed various leadership roles within the National Institutes of Health (Chief, Diabetes Branch, NIDDK and a prior member of the NIDDK Advisory Council), the FDA, the American Diabetes Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and other diabetes-interest groups. His top priority since joining UMass has been to build upon the University’s great tradition of basic diabetes research to achieve similar excellence in diabetes clinical care delivery and translational research.

Craig C. Mello, Ph D, Scientific Advisor

Dr. Mello is an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is also Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine and Co-director, RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA

Dr. Mello received his B.Sc. degree in Biochemistry from Brown University in 1982, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990. From 1990 to 1994, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA. Dr. Mello’s pioneering research on RNA inhibition (RNAi), in collaboration with Dr. Andrew Fire, has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards culminating with the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Dr. Mello, along with his colleague, Dr. Andrew Fire, discovered the process by which a particular form of RNA, the cellular material responsible for the transmission of genetic information, can silence targeted genes. This RNA inhibition process offers astounding potential for understanding and manipulating the cellular basis of human disease. RNAi is now the state-of-the-art method by which scientists can “knock out” the expression of specific genes to thus define the biological functions of those genes. Just as important, RNAi is a normal natural process for genetic regulation during development, opening a new window on developmental gene regulation.

Dr. Mello has been a Grove Advisor since 2009.