Management Team   BOD   SAB   CAB   About Metabolic Diseases
  Home > About > Clinical Advisory Board  
Dr. Mayer Davidson, M.D.
  Dr. Mayer Davidson, M.D. a fellow of the American College of Physicians, is also a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, American Diabetes Association, American Federation for Clinical Research, and The Endocrine Society, as well as other professional organizations. He is past president of the national American Diabetes Association and co-founder of that organization’s Los Angeles chapter. Dr. Davidson has acted as principal or co-principal investigator for many clinical studies of diabetes mellitus treatment. He has received the Banting Medal for Distinguished Service and the Upjohn Award for Outstanding Physician Educator in the Field of Diabetes from the American Diabetes Association. Dr. Davidson serves on the editorial boards of Geriatric and Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice. He is the founding editor of Current Diabetes Reports, editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, and an associate editor of Endo Trends. The author of more than 350 articles, book chapters, reviews, editorials, and abstracts, Dr. Davidson has lectured extensively at medical meetings, conferences, and symposia in the United States and abroad.
Dr. Robert A. Gelfand, M.D.
  Dr. Robert A. Gelfand, M.D. graduated with distinction from Stanford University in 1974 and received his MD degree from Yale University School of Medicine in 1978. After medical internship and residency at Bellevue-NYU in New York City, he returned to Yale in 1981 for a postdoctoral fellowship in Endocrinology. He subsequently joined the full-time Yale faculty as an NIH-supported academic clinical investigator.
  In 1989 Dr. Gelfand moved to industry, joining the Department of Clinical Research at Pfizer Inc., where for the next 11 years he directed a variety of early and late clinical development programs in diabetes and metabolic diseases. From 1995 to 2000 his major focus was Pfizer’s inhaled insulin project, on which he played a central leadership role that extended from the pre-IND period through late phase-III of worldwide clinical development. His positions at Pfizer included Group Director of Clinical Development, Head of the Metabolic Diseases Clinical Research Group, and Global Candidate Team Leader for inhaled insulin.
  Dr. Gelfand left Pfizer in 2000 to pursue his present career as an independent consultant in clinical drug development, diabetes and metabolic diseases. In 2002 he formed a limited liability company, RAG Consulting, LLC.
  Board-certified in Internal Medicine and in the subspecialty of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Dr. Gelfand holds an appointment as Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Yale, where he is a member of the Yale Medical Group and sees patients with diabetes and endocrine disorders. He is also on the medical staff at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, CT, where he sees patients as a visiting consulting attending at their Joslin Diabetes Center.
 
Jerrold M. Olefsky, M.D.
  Head of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the UCSD School of Medicine
  Dr. Olefsky was the 1998 recipient of the American Diabetes Association’s prestigious Banting Medal for scientific achievement. This award is given to one person each year in recognition of his or her significant long-term contributions to the understanding of diabetes. He has published over 350 papers and is currently on the Editorial Board of Endocrinology and Diabetes. He was at Stanford University School of Medicine from 1970 to 1978, and was a Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado, School of Medicine from 1979 to 1983, where he was Head of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. He served as President of Metabolex, on leave from UCSD, from August 1998 to September 1999. Dr. Olefsky received his M.D. from the University of Illinois.
  -Dr. Jerrold M. Olefsky also serves as a member of Metabolex’s Scientific Advisory Board-
   
Dr. David G. Orloff, M.D.
 
Dr. David G. Orloff, M.D. 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.
   
Dr. Robert S. Sherwin, M.D.
  Robert S. Sherwin. M.D. is the C.N.H. Professor of Medicine in the Section of Endocrinology at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT. He graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1967. After completing his residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, he moved to the National Institutes of Health Gerontology Research Center to undertake a fellowship in metabolism and diabetes. In 1972 Dr. Sherwin moved to Yale University School of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow and was subsequently appointed to the faculty in 1974. He serves as the Director of the Yale General Clinical Research Center, of the Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center and the JDRF Center for the Study of Hypoglycemia at Yale. His special clinical interests include patients with type 1 diabetes, intensified insulin therapy, complicated type 2 diabetes patients, and hypoglycemia associated with diabetes. He has served as President of the American Diabetes Association and as a member of the FDA Advisory Committee for Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs. He is editor of one of the major medical textbooks on diabetes mellitus and wrote the chapter on diabetes for the Cecil Textbook of Medicine. Dr. Sherwin has served as the Chairman of the Medical Science Advisory Board of the JDRF and on the editorial boards of leading diabetes and endocrine journals. He has published over 300 articles in peer reviewed journals. Dr. Sherwin is the recipient of the Novartis Award for long-standing achievement in diabetes and 2 MERIT Awards from NIDDK.
 
Dr. Gerald I. Shulman, M.D., Ph.D.
  Dr. Shulman is Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University, where he serves as Associate Section Chief of Endocrinology. He is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Shulman is an internationally recognized diabetes researcher, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1997 Outstanding Scientific Achievement (Lilly) Award from the American Diabetes Association and the 1997 Diabetes Care Research Award from Boehringer-Mannheim/Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. He is a leading authority on mechanisms of insulin resistance, the role of the liver and muscle in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes, and the benefits of exercise in the management of diabetes. Dr. Shulman’s practice is limited to the treatment of diabetes, and other disorders of glucose metabolism, with specific interests in the management of type 2 diabetes.
 
Dr. Joseph L. Witztum, M.D.
  Dr. Joseph L. Witztum, M.D. is internationally recognized for his research into the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, and in particular on the role of oxidized LDL in atherosclerotic lesions of experimental animals and man. His laboratory made the seminal observation that oxidation of LDL renders it immunogenic and has played an important role in the recognition that immune mechanisms are an integral part of the atherogenic process. In particular, his laboratory has demonstrated that there are both adaptive and innate humoral and cellular responses to oxidized LDL that impact atherogenesis, suggesting novel therapeutic strategies. For example, his laboratory first demonstrated the feasibility of developing a vaccine approach to inhibit atherogenesis. Dr. Witztum has published over 290 scientific manuscripts and is an ISI Most Highly Cited Author. He has been an Associate Editor of several important journals, including the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He is currently the Deputy Editor of the Journal of Lipid Research. He is on the Editorial Boards of Circulation, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, and Cell Metabolism, and is a Contributing Editor to the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Senior Consulting Editor of the Journal of American College of Cardiology. He lectures widely in the United States, Europe and Asia, where he has given a number of named lectureships.