American Pancreatic Association

Abstract

Through the efforts of Drs. Frank Brooks, Paul Webster, and Vay Liang “Bill” Go, the American Pancreatic Association (APA) was founded in 1969. Their mission was to provide a meeting place for individuals interested in the basic science and clinical research of pancreatic function and diseases at both the organ and cellular levels.1 Annual meetings grew over the next few years, and the official organizational structure and association by-laws were established in 1976. The yearly program attracted clinicians, surgeons, and basic scientists who were doing research and providing services related to pancreatic disease. At the 20th anniversary of the society’s founding, the association started to give out their first award. The Travel Award was imparted upon young and upcoming investigators, allowing them to participate and present at the annual APA meetings. In 1998, before the 30-year anniversary of the society, the Council and the president at the time, Dr. Peter Banks, reviewed the growth, success, and accomplishments of the association. Particularly, they celebrated the continued participation of new and young investigators and the fact that other assorted national foundations started to participate in the annual meetings. Best abstracts presented in pancreatic cancer received awards from the Hirshberg Foundation, whereas the National Pancreas Foundation furnished awards for the best abstracts on pancreatitis. Although the society was proactive in encouraging burgeoning scientists, Dr. Bill Go realized that the membership had matured since its founding and it was time to recognize not just young, promising scientists but also those who had significantly contributed to the field of clinical and basic pancreatic science. Many of the initial investigators and organizers who provided invaluable leadership and stewardship to our organization while serving as mentors and role models are unfortunately no longer with us.2 Dr. Go presented his proposal to Dr. Peter Banks and the council in an effort to establish the APA Lifetime Achievement Award. The proposal was accepted, and Dr. Go and his wife, Dr. Frisca Yan-Go, donated the initial and subsequent funds to support the award. In 2001, during Dr. Ed Bradley’s presidency, the award was first given out and named The Vay Liang and Frisca Go Award for Lifetime Achievement. It would be the highest award bestowed by our society to a member of the APA. Since its inception in 2001, the nominees for the lifetime achievement award have been selected by the APA council and its president and then presented to the awardee at the annual meeting. That year, Dr. Ed Bradley conferred the first APA Lifetime Achievement Award to Vay Liang W. Go, MD, recognizing him as a cofounder of the society and honoring his leadership and organizational and scientific contributions to the field. Those who have received the award are not only leaders within our association but also served as mentors and role models for future generations of pancreatic researchers and physicians. Their accomplishments in the field have inspired many and will continue to stimulate the next generation to do their best work. The subsequent yearly awardees are as follows, listed from the most recent recipient to the inception of the award: 2012: Murray Korc, MDDr. Murray Korc received his MD degree in 1974 from Albany Medical College in Albany, New York. He completed internal medicine training at Albany Medical Center Hospital in 1977 and an endocrinology fellowship at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in 1979. He also obtained postdoctoral research training at UCSF, working initially in the laboratory of Dr. John Williams, in the Department of Physiology, later in the laboratory of Dr. Ira Goldfine in the Department of Medicine, and finally in the laboratory of Dr. William Rutter in the Department of Biochemistry. He joined the Department of Medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson Arizona in 1981, where he stayed until 1989. During the subsequent 14 years, he was professor and chief of the Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of California at Irvine, where he was also the director of the Endocrinology Fellowship Program for 12 years, the director of the Osteoporosis Care and Prevention Program, a program leader in the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, and for 2 years, a vice chair for Research in the Department of Medicine. In 2003, Dr. Korc joined the faculty at Dartmouth Medical School as the Joseph M. Huber Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine and Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology. He later also became a professor in The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. He was a member of the Norris Cotton NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center and the scientific leader of its Pancreatic Cancer Group. In addition, he was the founding director of the Program for Experimental and Molecular Medicine, a multi-departmental PhD-granting training program in translational research. From 2008 until 2010, he was the associate dean for Clinical and Translational Research. During his 8-year tenure as Chair of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, he transformed the Department of Medicine by creating new fellowship programs in Endocrinology and Nephrology, a research track in the residency program, a junior faculty development program, and a faculty mentorship program. In 2011, he received the inaugural Murray Korc award at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, which is to be henceforth bestowed yearly to a faculty member who has demonstrated outstanding support to the Internal Medicine Residency Program. In October 2011, Dr. Korc moved to Indiana University School of Medicine to become the first Myles Brand Professor of Cancer Research and the inaugural director of their Pancreatic Cancer Signature Center. At Indiana University, he is a Professor of Medicine, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and he continues to run an active research laboratory. He is also the codirector of the Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Program at the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center. Dr. Korc has served on numerous editorial boards and study sections and on the scientific advisory boards of Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) and the Hirshberg Foundation. He is a former president of the American Pancreas Association and a member of the Association of American Physicians. His research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1981 and is focused on aberrant growth factor signaling in pancreatic cancer with the goal of designing novel therapeutic strategies. He has published nearly 270 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and he is internationally recognized for his contributions to our understanding of the role of growth factor receptors in pancreatic cancer, work recognized by an NIH MERIT award, and by a Distinguished Achievement Award in Pancreatic Cancer Research and Clinical Management from the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology. He has helped train dozens of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, residents, and fellows, many of whom are currently active in academic medicine in the United States, Europe, and Japan. He thanks his friends and colleagues at the APA for this tremendous honor, his many trainees who have helped him over the years, the American Pancreatic Association, and his wife, Antoinette Korc, MD, for her inspirational support. 2012: Horst F. Kern, MDDr. Horst Kern received his MD degree in 1964 from the University of Heidelberg. He completed his training in anatomy/cell biology at the same university. After further research activities in Canada and the United States, he became the head of the Institute for Clinical Cytobiology and Cytopathology in 1976 at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany. He was twice the dean of the Faculty of Medicine. He was a member of the Science Council of the Federal Republic of Germany, and, as the chairman of its scientific committee, he was involved in restructuring research institutions in East Germany during the reunion of divided Germany. He received the Distinguished Service Cross from the Federal Republic of Germany, and for the last 4 years of his career, he served as president of the Philipps University in Marburg. After having worked on the islets of Langerhans in lower vertebrates and also on experimental diabetes mellitus as a medical student and as a young assistant to the late Professor Helmut Ferner at the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Kern switched his research interest to exocrine pancreas in 1970. After his return to Heidelberg from a stay in New York, where he joined the group of Drs. George E. Palade and James D. Jamieson at the Rockefeller University, he started his research on the hormonal regulation of the major steps in the secretory process of acinar cells by combining in vivo and vitro techniques. The experiments included infusion of various secretagogues into the tail vein of conscious rats for periods up to 24 hours and then studying enzyme biosynthesis, intracellular transport of pulse-labeled proteins, and enzyme release in vitro. All these experiments were done in close cooperation with Dr. George A. Scheele in New York. The major results revealed a hormone-specific regulation of enzyme/iso-enzyme biosynthesis and a marked acceleration of intracellular transport of secretory proteins. These results are summarized in several chapters in the Handbook of Physiology and the leading textbook The Pancreas by George A. Scheele, Dr. Kern, and their associates. During dose-response studies conducted by Dr. Kern and a medical student, Michaela Lampel, they observed at supramaximal doses of the cholecystokinin-analogue cerulein marked alterations in the cytoplasm of pancreatic acinar cells. Zymogen granules fused among each other in the cytoplasm and to the lateral plasma membrane inducing an interstitial edema and infiltration of inflammatory cells. This led to destruction of a large proportion of exocrine tissue and resembled microscopic changes of acute edematous pancreatitis in humans. On the occasion of this year’s APA/International Association of Pancreatology (IAP) meeting and the award bestowed to him, Dr. Kern expresses his gratitude to a large number of American pancreatologists for their help and cooperation over many years. He would like to thank George Scheele for 3 decades of friendship and stimulating cooperation, and thanks go also to Jerry Gardner, Bill Go, Howard Reber, Travis Solomon, and Andrew Warshaw for their appreciation and support. 2011: Andrew L. Warshaw, MDDr. Andrew Warshaw was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School and then trained in surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He also spent 2 years as a clinical associate in the Section on Gastroenterology of the NIH and was a research fellow in medicine (gastroenterology) at the MGH. Since 1972, he has been on the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the faculty of Harvard Medical School. In 1987, he became professor of surgery at Harvard, and in 1997, the W. Gerald Austen Professor of Surgery, surgeon-in-chief and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital, positions he held until 2011. He is currently senior consultant for Regional and International Clinical Relations at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners Healthcare, and chairman emeritus of the Department of Surgery. Dr. Warshaw has been president of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract, the IAP, the Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, the New England Surgical Society, the Halsted Society, the Boston Surgical Society, the Society of Surgical Chairs, and the APA. He was a director of the American Board of Surgery and its chairman in 1993. He has served as governor of the American College of Surgeons and chair of its Socioeconomic Issues Committee. In 1999, he conceived and began the volunteerism program of the American College of Surgeons, which became Operation Giving Back. He has been first vice president of the College, a member of its Health Policy Steering Committee, and founding chair of the Board of Directors of the American College of Surgeons Professional Association/Political Action Committee. In 2007, he was elected treasurer of the American College of Surgeons and was appointed chairman of its Health Policy and Advocacy Group. Dr. Warshaw has made important contributions to the diagnosis, treatment, and understanding of the pathogenesis of inflammatory and malignant lesions of the pancreas. In 1972, he established the Pancreas Research Laboratory of the Massachusetts General Hospital, where 30 research fellows from 8 different countries performed basic research related to pancreatic diseases. Considered by many a master surgeon, he has contributed to the training of more than 250 surgical residents. His bibliography lists more than 430 original reports and 225 book chapters, reviews, and monographs and 13 books. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Surgery. He has received numerous awards, including the Master Educator Award of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract and the Rudolf Nissen Medallion from the German Society of General and Gastrointestinal Surgery. In 2012, Harvard Medical School established the Warshaw Family Professorship in Surgery in recognition of his contributions. 2010: Peter A. Banks, MDDr. Banks attended Harvard College, graduated from medical school at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and then did his internship and medical residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School in 1967. In 1993, he became the Director of Clinical Gastroenterology and Director for the Center for Pancreatic Disease at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He also initiated the Academic Clinical Track Fellowship Program in Gastroenterology and continues to direct the program. Many graduates have gone on to achieve national stature. Dr. Banks served as president of the APA and IAP, chairman of the Pancreatic Disorders Section of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), member of the Gastrointestinal Drugs Advisory Committee of the US Food and Drug Administration, and as member of the Board of Trustees of the American College of Gastroenterology. He has served on the editorial board of Pancreas and as an associate editor of Pancreatology. He is past president of the Digestive Disease National Coalition. Dr. Banks has received numerous awards, including the Jerry S. Trier Award for Excellence in Clinical Teaching at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1999, the AGA Distinguished Educator Award in 2000, the Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Gastroenterology Award from the AGA in 2006, and the James S. Winchell MD leadership award at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Banks’s major contributions in clinical research are in the field of pancreatitis with particular emphasis on recognition and treatment of severe acute pancreatitis, recognition and treatment of infected necrosis, and treatment of pain in chronic pancreatitis. Dr. Banks has written guidelines for the treatment of both acute and chronic pancreatitis, has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, and has written 2 books on pancreatitis. Dr. Banks remains very active as a clinician, clinical investigator, teacher, and mentor. 2009: Katsusuke Satake, MDDr. Satake was considered by many of us as an ambassador for Pancreatic Research in Japan to the international community. He was a pioneering pancreatic investigator and surgeon and an international lecturer, writer, and editor. Dr. Katsusuke Satake was born in Osaka in 1935. He graduated from medical school at Osaka City University in 1962, whereupon he immediately entered a 2-year internship at the US Air Force Hospital in Tachikawa, Japan. Dr. Satake continued his clinical training and research at the Department of Surgery, Osaka City University and later became the chief resident of that department. In 1970, he decided to join Dr. John M. Howard’s group as a research assistant in the Department of Surgery at Hahneman Medical College in Philadelphia, where he began his research in pancreatology. Dr. Satake’s initial research work on acute pancreatitis in dogs was published in Archives of Surgery and Annals of Surgery. Upon his return to Osaka City University in 1972, he continued his research in pancreatology by using rat and hamster models of pancreatic carcinogenesis as well as dog models of acute pancreatitis. Dr. Satake was promoted to assistant professor in 1973, lecturer in 1979, and subsequently to associate professor in 1989. During these highly productive periods of research in pancreatology and investigations on the pathophysiology and treatment of acute pancreatitis, carcinogenesis, chemoprevention, early detection, and effective treatment of pancreatic cancer, he used various technologies, including hormone assays, electron microscopy, hydrogen gas clearance, and tumor markers. In addition, Dr. Satake used his vast knowledge and leadership experience as a part time faculty member at the Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University from 2000 to 2006. He resigned from Osaka City University in 2006 and was appointed director of Otori Clinic, Sakai Osaka, Japan, until his untimely and unexpected death from lung cancer on March 21, 2009. Dr. Satake was a member of the APA and fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He was very active on the editorial boards of Pancreas and Pancreatology and served as editor-in-chief of Suizo. He was a great mentor and served with distinction as a member of the Japan Pancreas Society, Japan Surgical Society, Japan Society of Gastroenterological Surgery, and Japan Society of Gastroenterology. Through his leadership, Dr. Satake greatly contributed to mutually beneficial relationships between the Japan Pancreas Society and the APA, bringing together researchers and clinicians from across the globe. 2009: Fred S. Gorelick, MDFred was raised in southern Missouri, attended Drury College, and graduated from medical school at the University of Missouri in Columbia. After completing his medical residency at Missouri, he entered a GI Fellowship at Yale. Fred enjoyed clinical activities and, with John Dobbins, shared the responsibilities for endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatographies at Yale during the formative years of this procedure. His clinical interests in pancreatic diseases were highlighted by authorship of book chapters with Mark Topazian on acute pancreatitis. During his fellowship, Fred began studies with Jim Jamieson at Yale on the pancreatic acinar cell while sharing a laboratory bench with Larry Miller. Working with Jonathan Cohn and Steve Freedman, his research led to discovery of a calcium-calmodulin–dependent protein kinase in the pancreas. Fred further characterized the activation of this enzyme and its role in neurotransmitter release in the laboratory of Paul Greengard at Rockefeller University. After returning to Yale, Fred’s first foray into pancreatitis came in studies with Steve Leach and later with Chris Marino. They demonstrated that digestive zymogens could undergo regulated activation in the pancreatic acinar cell. This pathologic response is thought to play a key role in acute pancreatitis, and it has remained a major interest of his laboratory. His more recent work has emphasized factors that can modulate the severity of pancreatitis and serve as potential therapeutic targets. Examples include the intravascular and pancreatic pH, and the effects of lactate, bicarbonate, and the intracellular signaling molecule, AMPK, each of which seem to affect the outcomes of pancreatitis. The NIH and the Veterans Administration have generously supported this research. Fred has served as president of the APA, member of the AGA Research Council representing pancreatic disease, full-time member and chair of NIH National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Study Sections, and associate editor for the journal Gastroenterology. Among his awards are the Morton Grossmann Research Award of the AGA and election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and Association of American Physicians (AAP). He is currently a professor of medicine (Digestive Diseases) and Cell Biology at Yale and a visiting scientist at Rockefeller University. Fred is also the deputy director of the Yale MD, PhD Program and director of the NIH-sponsored T32 Training Program in Investigative Gastroenterology. Fred continues to work closely with his long-term mentor and associate, Jim Jamieson, sharing both teaching and administrative responsibilities, and authoring another chapter on the acinar cell for LR Johnson’s textbook. He attributes any success that he may have realized in life to his 2 remarkable mentors, Jim Jamieson and Paul Greengard, great friends and unmatchable colleagues, and a wonderful and successful cohort of current and former students. 2008: Daniel S. Longnecker, MDDaniel S. Longnecker was born in Omaha, Nebraska to parents who lived near Council Bluffs, Iowa. His primary education was in a 2-room, 2-teacher country school where the curriculum focused on the 3 R’s. There was no course in science until the ninth grade at Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs, where Dan was a “pre-premed” student. He received AB and MD (1956) degrees from the University of Iowa (Iowa City). He interned at Cleveland City Hospital and entered residency in pathology at Case Western Reserve University. In 1959, he returned to Iowa City to complete pathology training while enrolled as a graduate student in Biochemistry (MS, 1962) at the University of Iowa. His thesis project focused on the activity of proteolytic enzymes. He joined the faculty in pathology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, where he completed his first project, which focused on pancreatic pathology (iron storage in cystic fibrosis). During 1965-1967, he took a leave of absence to complete an NIH special fellowship in experimental pathology at the University of Pittsburgh working with Dr. Emmanuel Farber on the biochemical basis of the experimental induction of pancreatitis by chemicals in rats. His first lectures to medical students on the pathology of pancreatic disease were at the University of Pittsburgh as a visiting faculty member during those years. He returned to the faculty at the University of Iowa in 1967 and became associate professor of pathology in 1968. He held a joint appointment in pharmacology at the Oakdale Toxicology Center. In 1969, he moved to the Department of Pathology, St. Louis University School of Medicine, where he continued work on chemically induced pancreatitis in rats. In 1972, he moved to Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH, as a professor in the Department of Pathology. He initiated studies to create animal models of pancreatic carcinoma, initially working in rats and later in hamsters and transgenic mice. Findings in the animal models were compared to changes seen in the human pancreas, especially in regard to the histopathology of neoplasms and focal proliferative lesions that might serve as preneoplastic lesions. He has taken great interest in new developments in pancreatic pathology such as the recognition and classification of intraductal papillary mucinous and mucinous cystic neoplasms, and the recent recognition of autoimmune pancreatitis. He has served as member of research review groups for NIH (NCI), American Cancer Society, Veterans Administration, and International Science Foundation; as member of the Council of the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences and the Board of Scientific Counselors, and the Peer Review Panel of the National Toxicology Program. He was president of the APA in 1988. He is author or coauthor of more than 200 journal articles, reviews, and book chapters. Dan is currently Professor, Active Emeritus, in the Department of Pathology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. 2007: Howard A. Reber, MDDr. Reber is Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Gastrointestinal Surgery section at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, received his undergraduate medical education at the University of Pennsylvania, and remained at the same institution for his surgical training. During that time, he was selected nationally in the first round of individuals for a 4-year basic science and clinical program to train academic physicians. This program was funded by the NIH. This began a stellar academic career that has culminated in his current national and international reputation as a multifaceted academic pancreaticobiliary surgeon. His career has taken him to 3 academic institutions since the end of his formal academic training in 1970: the UCSF School of Medicine, the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, and in 1986 to UCLA, where he was appointed professor and vice chair of the Department of Surgery. Over that period of more than 30 years, he has been the principal investigator of his own research programs, with continuous peer-reviewed funding from the Veterans Administration Merit Review Program, NIH, and NCI sources. To date, his principal research accomplishments all involve basic and translational studies in pancreatic physiology and disease. He was the first to apply micropuncture methodology to the study of pancreatic electrolyte secretion, which demonstrated that the pancreatic ducts actively modified the composition of pancreatic secretions. He developed a model for the study of pancreatic duct permeability and defined the role of the main duct in acute pancreatitis. More recently, through a series of elegant studies, he demonstrated that chronic pancreatitis is associated with a severe reduction of blood flow to the pancreas, which is a major cause of the pain that afflicts these patients. Surgical measures that relieve pain seem to increase blood flow to the gland. In 1995, he established the Ronald S. Hirshberg Pancreatic Cancer Research Laboratory at UCLA. This laboratory pursues basic and translational pancreatic cancer research and has focused on the creation of an animal model of pancreatic cancer for investigating the mechanisms of inflammatory process, angiogenesis, and cell signaling. The various animal models form the Animal Model Core of the NIH-funded UCLA Center for Excellence in Pancreatic Diseases (1 P01 AT003960-01A1). His laboratory has become the key resource for training young investigators and pioneering research work on the effect of polyphenols and omega-3 fatty acids in pancreatic proliferative and inflammatory processes, which is currently also funded by the National Cancer Institute. In 2006, under his leadership, he founded and is currently the director of the UCLA Center for Pancreatic Diseases, a key multidisciplinary clinical center for coordinated management of patients with pancreatic diseases and serves as a resource for translational research and clinical trials. Dr. Reber has played a critical clinical role at UCLA, where his reputation as a pancreatic cancer surgeon and caring physician has attracted an enormous patient population with this disease. It is this impressive clinical base that has attracted other clinicians and scientists to the UCLA community. 2006: Phillip P. Toskes, MDDr. Phillip Toskes was born and raised in Baltimore. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Medical School. He trained in internal medicine at the University of Maryland and in gastroenterology at the University of Pennsylvania. He spent 3 years at the Walter Reed Medical Center in the research laboratory of De Marcel Conrad. He joined the faculty of the University of Florida in 1973. He held joint appointments at the University of Florida and the Malcolm Randall Veterans Medical Center. Dr. Toskes rose rapidly in the academic ranks to chief of the Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition Division. In 1978, he was appointed associate chief for medical affairs. Dr. Toskes served as president of the AGA and president of the APA. He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation. He served as chairman of medicine at the University of Florida and physician-in-chief of the Shands Hospital of the University of Florida. Dr. Toskes is currently professor of medicine within the Gastroenterology Division of the University of Florida. He also serves as director of the nutritional section. Dr. Toskes was a director of the American Board of Internal Medicine, a position he held for 6 years. He was very involved in matters pertaining to training of gastroenterologists. He was a leader in the reformation of the American Board of Internal Medicine and was instrumental in the development of recertification guidelines. Dr. Toskes held a number of positions at the NIH, serving as chairman of several study sections and as a consultant to the training grant committee. Dr. Toskes was the principal investigator for the training grant in gastroenterology at the University of Florida for some 30 years. Dr. Toskes has been a director of the National Pancreatic Foundation for the past 6 years and has chaired several symposia directed to recruiting young physicians into pancreatology. Dr. Toskes’s research efforts have been directed to the development of diagnostic tests, which confirm the presence of chronic pancreatitis. He also has been very active in developing methods to make the diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis solid. He has been a leader in using the principle of pancreatic feedback to manage the pain of chronic pancreatitis. Dr. Toskes has made more than 500 contributions to the literature. He has coauthored the