Six faculty members elected for membership into ASCI and AAP
Six UT Southwestern faculty investigators and clinicians – from Internal Medicine, Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Dermatology, and Pediatrics – have been elected into two of the country’s most respected medical honor societies: three into the American Society for Clinical Investigation and three into the Association of American Physicians.
Drs. Denise Marciano, Joshua Mendell, and Richard Wang were inducted into the ASCI, and Drs. Suzanne D. Conzen, Ralph DeBerardinis, and Dwight Towler joined the ranks of the AAP.
Established in 1908, the ASCI is one of the nation’s oldest and most respected medical organizations dedicated to the advancement of disease research. Its more than 3,000 members are committed to mentoring future generations of physician-scientists. Because members must be 50 years of age or younger at the time of election, recognition reflects accomplishments of honorees relatively early in their careers.
Election into the AAP is considered a top honor in science and medicine as it recognizes researchers who have made impactful contributions to improve health. Founded in 1885, the AAP has more than 1,700 active members and approximately 600 emeritus and honorary members from the United State, Canada, and other countries.
The six honorees had been scheduled to attend the joint meeting of the ASCI, AAP, and the American Physician Scientists Association in Chicago April 3-5, but the event was canceled due to the spread of COVID-19. Instead, the 2021 meeting will honor the 2020 new members along with new ones for that year.
New ASCI members
Dr. Denise Marciano
Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Cell Biology
“It is a sincere honor to be elected to ASCI and receive recognition for our work on kidney disease,” said Dr. Marciano, a member of the Division of Nephrology. “Some of ASCI’s current members have been inspirational mentors to me, and I hope to follow in their footsteps by helping to guide and train future physician-scientists.”
Dr. Marciano earned her Ph.D. in cellular biophysics at The Rockefeller University and her medical degree at Weill Cornell Medical College. She completed her medical training at the University of California San Francisco, where she was drawn to caring for patients with kidney disease.
Her clinical experiences at UCSF subsequently fueled a passion for research on how the kidney develops and functions. Lured by the opportunity to meld her clinical and scientific interests, Dr. Marciano joined the UTSW faculty in 2011. She is also an attending physician at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where she sees patients with renal disease. The goal of Dr. Marciano’s research is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms that drive kidney development and disease. She uses a variety of cellular, genetic, and biochemical approaches to study these processes in animal and in vitro model systems.
Dr. Joshua Mendell
Professor of Molecular Biology
“I am extremely honored to join this group of physician-scientists, and I am grateful for this recognition of the translational impact of our research. I am indebted to the many members of my research group, past and present, whose outstanding work and dedication made this possible,” said Dr. Mendell, who also is a member of UT Southwestern’s Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine.
A Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Dr. Mendell earned an M.D. and Ph.D. in human genetics from the Medical Scientist Training Program at Johns Hopkins University. He joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2004 and was recruited to UT Southwestern in 2011. That same year, Dr. Mendell was named a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar in Cancer Research.
Dr. Mendell has conducted pioneering work on the functions of noncoding RNAs in normal physiology and in diseases such as cancer. Much of his laboratory-based research focuses on a class of very small noncoding RNAs called microRNAs, which contribute to tumor formation and become dramatically reprogrammed in cancer cells. In addition to their fundamental scientific importance, his discoveries have revealed new therapeutic opportunities.
Dr. Richard Wang
Associate Professor of Dermatology
“It is a great honor to be among the UT Southwestern faculty elected to the ASCI. This recognition also reflects UT Southwestern’s sustained commitment to supporting physician-scientists,” said Dr. Wang.
A faculty member since 2010, Dr. Wang earned his combined medical and doctoral degree in cell biology and genetics through the Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. Program, a collaboration between Weill Cornell Medical College, The Rockefeller University, and Memorial Sloan Kettering. He completed an internship in internal medicine and a residency in dermatology, both at UTSW, before completing a research fellowship in cancer biology in the lab of Dr. Beth Levine, Professor of Internal Medicine and Microbiology, with the support of the UTSW Physician Scientist Training Program and the Dermatology Foundation.
Certified by the American Board of Dermatology, Dr. Wang specializes in general medical dermatology and has an interest in treating nonmelanoma skin cancer, including Merkel cell carcinoma, viral skin infections, and psoriasis. His research – supported by the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund – focuses on pathways central to the development of both normal skin and nonmelanoma skin cancer. His specific areas of interest include viruses that cause cancer and the transport and metabolism of glucose.
New AAP members
Dr. Suzanne D. Conzen
Professor of Internal Medicine
“Two decades ago, my laboratory embarked on a journey to identify mediators of breast cancer cell survival. We found that the human stress hormone receptor has roles in estrogen-independent breast cancer cells that were not previously known,” said Dr. Conzen, who joined the UTSW faculty in 2019. “Now that these findings are being applied to various epithelial cancers and have led to testing novel cancer therapies, it is extremely rewarding to reexamine the findings in the clinical context. It is an honor to be inducted into the AAP, a society of like-minded physicians who enjoy taking the long and winding road from basic discovery to human biology.”
Dr. Conzen serves as Chief of Internal Medicine’s Division of Hematology and Oncology. She earned her medical degree at Yale School of Medicine and completed her residency in internal medicine at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. She then received advanced training in hematology and medical oncology through a clinical fellowship at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and in molecular oncology through a research fellowship in the Department of Biochemistry at Dartmouth Medical School. She also holds a master’s degree from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
An established physician-scientist, Dr. Conzen was elected to the ASCI in 2006. Her laboratory research identified a role for glucocorticoid receptor activity in epithelial cancers. Her previous work at the University of Chicago dissected mechanisms of glucocorticoid receptor signaling in breast cancer biology and, more recently, in therapy-resistant prostate and ovarian cancer.
Dr. Ralph DeBerardinis
Professor of Pediatrics
Professor in the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute (CRI) at UT Southwestern
“It’s an honor to be elected into the Association of American Physicians. As a physician-scientist interested in mechanisms of human disease, I am delighted to be part of this community,” said Dr. DeBerardinis, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at UTSW.
A faculty member since 2008, Ralph DeBerardinis earned M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He was the first trainee in the combined residency program in pediatrics and medical genetics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. DeBerardinis performed postdoctoral research at the Penn Cancer Center from 2004 to 2007. He joined the CRI at UT Southwestern shortly after its founding in 2012.
Dr. DeBerardinis leads the CRI’s Genetic and Metabolic Disease Program. He was recognized for his ongoing work to understand the role of metabolic abnormalities in disease, particularly in the field of cancer. His lab’s approaches to studying metabolism in cancer patients is providing researchers with insights impossible to obtain from purely laboratory-based experiments. Dr. DeBerardinis and his collaborators have studied metabolism in nearly a dozen forms of human cancer. Findings from his research have led to the discovery that lactate provides fuel for growing tumors, challenging a nearly century-old observation known as the Warburg effect.
Dr. Dwight Towler
Professor of Internal Medicine
“I’m extremely honored. It’s interesting to note that the AAP was founded for ‘the advancement of scientific and practical medicine.’ I cannot think of a time in recent memory when these core tenets have had more relevance to human health care as we face the COVID-19 pandemic together,” said Dr. Towler, who joined the UTSW Internal Medicine faculty in 2015 and serves as the Department’s Vice Chair for Research.
Dr. Towler is a board-certified internist and endocrinologist. He earned his medical degree and doctorate in biochemistry from Washington University in St. Louis and completed his medical residency and endocrine/metabolism fellowship at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. At Washington University, he served as Chief of Bone and Mineral Diseases – the Division founded there by the late Dr. Louis V. Avioli, a pioneering expert on osteoporosis and calcium metabolism – for almost a decade. In addition to his career in academic medicine, Dr. Towler served as a Senior Director of Bone Biology and Osteoporosis Research in the pharmaceutical industry, and is co-inventor of patented selective androgen receptor modulators (SARMs) with potential clinical applications in the treatment of musculoskeletal frailty.
He is a specialist in bone and mineral metabolism disorders – including osteoporosis and the vascular calcification that hardens arteries with aging, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. Dr. Towler’s current research focuses on the endocrine regulation of cardiovascular calcification and bone-vascular interactions.