Mark Anderson, MD, PhD, a pioneer in diabetes research and professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences - one of the highest honors in American science.
Since 2022, Anderson has led UCSF's Diabetes Center , which was recognized last year as one of the country's premier institutions for diabetes-related research by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
As a physician, Anderson treats people with autoimmune diseases, and many of his patients have Type 1 diabetes, or T1D, the type of diabetes where the body's immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.
He has spent much of his research career trying to understand what causes these autoimmune attacks and how they might be prevented. His trailblazing study of the AIRE gene, an autoimmune regulator, revealed how the thymus gland trains the immune system not to attack the body. The discovery opened new paths for research and potential treatments of autoimmune diseases.
More recently, Anderson has been looking for answers in a relatively new form of cancer treatment called immunotherapy, which involves switching on immune cells to attack tumors. When some of switches get flipped for cancer therapy, some patients can develop T1D and other autoimmune diseases. Anderson is studying the switches to see if they can be used to turn off T1D as well.
In 2020, Anderson was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. In 2024, he received the William B. Coley Award in Basic and Tumor Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute. He is also the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor in Metabolism and Endocrinology and the Robert B. Friend and Michelle M. Friend Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and, with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine, provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.
