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the discoveries that doctor C. Ronald Kahn have been central to forming our
understanding of the mechanisms of diabetes
At the 2013 joslin international symposium on diabetes
researchers from around the world have traveled to Boston to talk about their
own research
and to honor the man who has made such tremendous contributions to the fight
against diabetes
we spoke to Dr. Kahn about his career his discoveries
and what he sees as the future Diabetes Research
I came from a family where my father was a merchant, but my brother was really interested
in science. He is an older brother and he got me interested in doing
research
actually at a very young age started doing research in college
I did a lot of research in medical school and then
the real important turning point in my career
was when I went to the National Institutes of Health, that was 1970
and I joined the laboratory a Jesse Roth and Phil Gordon
who were really pioneering new ways to think about diabetes research
and it was a very exciting time and I think that
the atmosphere there the
creativity of not only these two leaders but the people who were coming
to work with them
who became leaders in many places around the world really inspired me
to see the excitement in this field.
This of course then led eventually to my coming to Joslin in 1981
where I got to develop here my own group
researchers and to bring other people in who could compliment my interest with
interest in type 1 diabetes type 2
metabolism islet cell physiology
complications in diabetes and this has been a very stimulating
career for me and I'm still very stimulated by the research
one of things it's been particularly exciting about having research is a
career
is that you can follow a problem that is
interesting and challenging in many different directions. Diabetes
is a complicated disease it's not just a single disease we know that there's type
1 and type 2 diabetes and we know that there are of course complications of diabetes
But each of these has many aspects and one of the things that I find most exciting
personally by doing research is to pursue new aspects in new directions
to follow those leads in different ways and
to try to do it in a way that ultimately I think I can bring together a picture
of diabetes and its pathophysiology its cause
if you will in a way that wouldn't be possible without
only focused in a single track. For me
the ultimate goal this is not just a cure
I say that in a way that somebody might think I'm taking this lightly but I
think a cure is not enough
really what we like is prevention. What we really like to do
it's to keep people from getting type 1 diabetes type 2 diabetes or any of the
complications
from the very beginning and so what's
so important about understanding how these diseases progress
in these basic pathways is that it does give us that opportunity
or eventually it will give us that opportunity because we'll know what's
going on before it.
we now know the type 1 diabetes starts is an autoimmune disease
many years before people actually lose beta-cell function
and develop clinical symptoms. That's when we should try to block it
we know the type 2 diabetes starts as insulin resistance
many years before the people develop any abnormalities in glucose
function. We know we can reverse this to a large extent
in many people by weight loss and exercise at least temporarily
but that doesn't seem to be a long-term fix for everybody
in part because it's hard to do that's where we need to block it
and we know that in individuals who are developing diabetes
that certain individuals are more prone
to develop complications and others
have we don't know exactly why we don't know what the genetics
or the factors are that contribute to this but if we did
then we should try to block those as well so if somebody does develop
diabetes we're not only treating the blood sugar
are the metabolic abnormalities but we're really treating the things that
make people with diabetes be suffer most with their disease
which is the risk long-term complications. So
I'm optimistic about all all of these things actually
but it will take work and I think that we have to realize that we have a long
way still to go
even though we've made tremendous progress. I think that
the biggest obstacle in research
in general is lack of imagination
One of the challenges
for all scientists in every field
is to try to think outside the box. We
learn about classical pathways that are written in textbooks
in time in school and we read articles
and we say, "Oh, this has been proven, this has been
shown in a way that we don't need to look any further at this"
and almost always that's wrong almost always there's more to the story
if we look at it more deeply and so what I would say
is that of course we have challenges with funding
we have challenges other sorts but I think that as an investigator
the most important advice I try to give my own fellows is
to try to think ahead, think creatively to think about what will make the
biggest
impact in terms of a discovery
not only because you'll get a nice publication because it'll have a big
impact in the field
and that impact in the field will eventually add up
with other impacts to lead to new treatments and new preventions for
diabetes and its complications