Diabetes foundation honors Eisenbarth

Eisenbarth

George Eisenbarth, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes and professor of pediatrics, medicine and immunology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, received the Commitment to the Dream Award on May 8 at the 11th annual Dream Gala of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).

A graduate of Columbia University, Eisenbarth received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Duke University Medical School. At the Joslin Diabetes Center, where he founded the immunology section, Eisenbarth and his colleagues discovered that type 1 diabetes was a chronic autoimmune disease with multiple stages and that diabetes could be predicted.

Eisenbarth continues his role as an actively practicing clinician treating patients with multiple autoimmune diseases. A founding member and past president of the Clinical Immunology Society, he currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal Diabetes and the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology Metabolism. He also serves on the steering committees of TrialNet, TEDDY and the Immune Tolerance Network and is a founding member of the Brehm Coalition.

"JDRF gave me my first grant, a career development award, which started me on a lifetime quest," Eisenbarth said. "We can now predict diabetes in man and prevent it in animal models. Trials of prevention in man are currently in progress. For all the families helping in our research, I am very optimistic that therapy will be revolutionized in this decade and safe prevention of diabetes may shortly follow."

This year's Dream Gala at INVESCO Field at Mile High raised $550,000 dollars for research to find a cure for type 1 diabetes.