Science and Medicine
CHARLES A. DINARELLO, M.D.
Dr. Charles Dinarello is a preeminent biomedical scientist known for his role in developing improved treatments for inflammatory disorders and autoimmune diseases. His isolation and cloning of the “fever molecule” helped create the field of cytokine biology, which deals with the impact of inflammation on the human body. Cytokines are small proteins that regulate inflammation and often result in debilitating diseases. His research helped develop new strategies to block those cytokines that promote inflammation.
Clinical applications resulting from his work have alleviated pain and suffering for thousands of patients with diseases such as adult and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and gouty arthritis. More recently, these new therapies have been applied to other disorders including cancer, diabetes mellitus and heart failure.
Dr. Dinarello was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1998. He has served on the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and was President of the International Cytokine Society. He has published over 600 original research articles and serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals.
He has received or been the co-recipient of three of science’s most coveted prizes: Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2009), Albany Prize in Medicine (2009) and the 2010 Ehrlich Prize. He will receive the Novartis Prize in Immunology this summer. In 1993, he received Germany’s Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine and donated the prize money ($125,000) to universities and established the Sheldon Wolff Professorship in Medicine at Tufts University to honor his late mentor. Dr. Dinarello contributes a substantial portion of each prize to the Interleukin Foundation, which he established to support research of young investigators.
Currently a professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Dr. Dinarello has trained more than forty investigators, many of whom are recognized experts in their fields. Previously, he was Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine and senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Dinarello received his medical degree from Yale University and his clinical training at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He holds honorary degrees from University of Marseille, University of Frankfurt, and the Weizmann Institute in Israel.