Christos Mantzoros is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He serves as the Clinical Research Overseer of the Division of Endocrinology Diabetes and Metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Joslin Diabetes Center and he is a member of the Executive Committee of the Scholars in Clinical Science Program, a postgraduate clinical investigators training program at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Mantzoros is a graduate of the University of Athens Medical School, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health.  In addition to his medical Degree he holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Epidemiology, a Master’s degree in Clinical Investigation and a Doctor in Medical Sciences degree. He is Board certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism as well as Clinical Nutrition. 

At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Mantzoros sees patients, teaches and conducts research on obesity and metabolic diseases. He is recognized as an international expert on obesity and diabetes and has published more than 170 original papers, more than 70 chapters and reviews and has received more than 7500 citations. His book on “Obesity and Diabetes” was published in 2006 by Humana Press and the same edition was also published, in second printing, by the I.A. Daskalopoulos Foundation in Europe. His book on “Nutrition and Metabolism” is expected to be published later in 2007.

Dr. Mantzoros serves on the Editorial Board of several journals including the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. He has served as an advisor to the Government as well as Pharmaceutical and Diagnostics companies and has been given several awards including the prestigious American Association of Clinical Endocrinology Frontiers in Science Award, the Novartis Award in Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, the Lilly Award by the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, the American Society for Nutrition Mead Johnson Award, the HypoCCS award in Paris, France and the Wilhelm Friedrich Bessel Award by the Humboldt Foundation of Germany. More recently, Dr. Mantzoros received the Center for Faculty Development Mentorship Award, for Excellence in Mentoring, from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School and was elected to ASCI (American Association of Clinical Investigation).

Dr. Mantzoros is the scientific co-founder and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of InteKrin Metabolic Therapeutics.

Jin-Long Chen, Ph.D. is currently the Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer at NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., a privately held company focused on the use of emerging human biology to discover novel drug targets and develop transformational medicines in the field of metabolic and cardiovascular disease.  Dr. Chen has over 10 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, beginning his professional career at Tularik, where he was instrumental in establishing and directing Tularik's drug discovery efforts in metabolic disease, including diabetes and obesity. In addition, he pioneered powerful platform approaches to discover novel drug targets by identifying and characterizing orphan receptors and their ligands. This research not only opened up opportunities to study new aspects of biology and physiology across multiple disease areas, but also led to important contributions to the development pipeline, including T-131 (now INT-131). Following the acquisition of Tularik by Amgen in 2004, Dr. Chen initially assumed responsibility for guiding Biology research across the therapeutic areas at Amgen South San Francisco, including all aspects of target discovery.  Subsequently, he was appointed to the role of Vice President, Research at Amgen Inc., with responsibility for leading the company's global research efforts in support of new drug discovery for the treatment of human diseases of metabolism, bone, mineral balance and muscle.

Fredrick L. Dunn, M.D. was the Head of Clinical Research for Metabolism and Endocrinology at Tularik, Inc, where he led the successful phase 2a “proof of concept” study for T-131 (now INT-131). At Tularik, he was responsible for the clinical development of a number of metabolic compounds in diabetes, obesity and dyslipidemia. Dr. Dunn has over 10 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including positions at Novartis Pharmaceuticals as Global Head, Diabetes Clinical Research, and at Merck & Co as Executive Director, Academic and Professional Affairs. Prior to joining industry, Dr. Dunn served on the faculties of the Joslin Diabetes Center (Boston), Harvard Medical School and Duke University Medical Center. He received his medical degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and completed his residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. After the acquisition of Tularik by Amgen, Inc, Dr. Dunn returned to an academic position where he is currently Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Dr. El-Hage is a pharmacologist with extensive FDA experience having worked in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) for over 18 years. Most of her tenure at CDER was spent in the Division of Metabolic and Endocrine Drug Products, where she served as the pharmacology/toxicology supervisor from 2000-2006. Dr El-Hage also concomitantly served as the Associate Director for pharm/tox in the Office of Drug Evaluation I from 2002-2004. Her areas of expertise include preclinical drug development and regulatory toxicology for compounds indicated for the treatment of diabetes, obesity, dyslipidemia, and hormone/metabolic disorders. Dr E-Hage is widely recognized for her expertise in the area of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) agonist toxicology. She is currently employed as a senior consultant with the Aclairo Pharmaceutical Development Group.

Robert R. Henry, M.D., is Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.  He is also Chief of both the Section of Endocrinology, Metabolism & Diabetes and the Center for Metabolic Research at the VA Medical Center in San Diego.

Dr. Henry received his medical degree from the University of Manitoba Medical School, Manitoba, Canada, where he also completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in endocrinology.  He has been Visiting Assistant Professor of Medicine, Diabetic Research Unit, at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Visiting Assistant Research Endocrinologist at the University of California, San Diego, and Visiting Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Royal Infirmary.

He is a member of several professional societies, including the American Diabetes Association, the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, the Endocrine Society, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and Edinburgh, and the American Federation for Clinical Research. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health-NIDDK, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the American Diabetes Association and the pharmaceutical industry.

Recent honors include the American Diabetes Association Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award and the Robert H. Williams-Rachmiel Levine Award from the Western Metabolism Club. Dr Henry has published more than 250 journal and review articles.  His current research interests involve the metabolic and cardiovascular regulation and the effects of the adipose tissue secretory product adiponectin, signal interactions between human skeletal muscle and adipose tissue, defects of glucose/fatty acid metabolism and insulin signal transduction in these tissues of obese and type 2 diabetic patients.

Steven Kliewer earned his B.S. in biochemistry from Brown University in 1985 and his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1990. From 1990-1993, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Ronald Evans at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA, where he began his studies on orphan nuclear receptors. During this period, he discovered the central role that the retinoid receptor RXR plays as an obligate heterodimer partner for the vitamin D, thyroid hormone, retinoic acid, and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors. In 1993, he joined Glaxo, Inc. in Research Triangle Park, NC, where he founded a scientific group devoted to exploiting orphan nuclear receptors as drug discovery targets. Among his achievements at Glaxo was the discovery that the fatty acid receptor PPAR-gamma is the molecular target for the antidiabetic glitazone class of drugs, which ultimately led to the clinical development compound farglitazar. He also discovered the xenobiotic receptor PXR and showed that it is responsible for an important class of drug-drug interactions. A practical consequence of this work is that new drugs can be screened efficiently for harmful interactions with other medications. In 2002, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas where he is currently Professor of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology and holds the Hamon Distinguished Chair in Basic Cancer Research. His research is focused on nuclear receptors and their roles in xenobiotic and lipid metabolism.

Dr. Richard W. Nesto is Chairman, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Lahey Clinic Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.  Previously, he was Co-Director of the Institute for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.  Dr. Nesto’s major clinical and research interest involves heart disease in patients with diabetes mellitus.  His contributions have lead to a wider appreciation that heart disease has unique features in diabetes and that treatment of coronary syndromes requires a specialized approach in these patients.  He is currently a principal investigator and/or steering committee member of many major international trials evaluating heart disease in diabetes including BARI-2D, FREEDOM, APPROACH, PERISCOPE, NAVIGATOR and INTENSIVE.  He practices interventional cardiology and his expertise in intracoronary imaging techniques has contributed to the characterization of the anatomic substrate underlying acute coronary syndromes.  He has authored or co-authored over 250 original scientific articles, reviews and abstracts and numerous book chapters.

Dr. Nesto is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and American College of Chest Physicians, and a member of the American Diabetes Association and is Vice President of the International Society of Diabetes and Vascular Disease.  He is the author of definitive chapters on diabetes and heart disease in Braunwald’s Heart Disease, William’s Textbook of Endocrinology and Joslin’s Diabetes.  He has served on numerous national and international consensus panels and advisory boards evaluating the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease in diabetes.  The AHA selected him to be the physician spokesperson for its national campaign “Heart of Diabetes” designed to increase awareness of diabetes as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Orloff is the Medical Director at Medpace, Inc., a contract research organization based in Cincinnati, Ohio, with a focus in the metabolism/diabetes/cardiovascular disease area. From 2000-2006, he was the Director of the Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dr. Orloff attended Harvard College and the New York University School of Medicine, graduating in 1984. After internship and residency in internal medicine at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, Dr. Orloff was a research and clinical fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1987-1994 where his work focused on signal transduction and translational control of gene expression. In addition while at NIH, he completed a clinical endocrinology fellowship in the joint NICHD-NIDDK program.

In 1994, Dr. Orloff moved to FDA where he was in charge of FDA’s regulatory oversight of new drugs for the treatment of dyslipidemia, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, thyroid disease, growth disorders, and inborn errors of metabolism, in addition to the panoply of other indications in endocrinology and metabolic disease.

Dr. Orloff’s clinical work at NIH over the past many years has been in dyslipidemia and cardiovascular disease prevention. He was a consultant to the National Cholesterol Education Program’s Adult Treatment Panel III. Until leaving federal service, Dr. Orloff was a commissioned officer (Capt., 0-6) in the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), and he is the recipient of multiple honors, including the PHS Outstanding Service Medal. He serves on the board of directors of the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences at NIH. He has published in both the basic sciences and in recent years on clinical trial and regulatory issues in drug development and approval.