Daniel L. Kastner

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Daniel L. Kastner
Daniel L. Kastner.jpg
Born8 July 1951  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Lockport   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Alma mater
Awards
  • George M. Kober Medal (2024)  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Website https://www.genome.gov/staff/Dan-Kastner-MD-PhD   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Daniel L. Kastner (born 1951) [1] is an American physician and researcher specialising in the genetics of autoinflammatory disorders. He is a Distinguished Investigator at the National Institutes of Health and was the Scientific Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute between 2010 to 2021. [2] [3] He was awarded the 2021 Crafoord Prize for Polyarthritis for his pioneering work on autoinflammatory diseases. [4]

Contents

Early life and education

Kastner was born in Lockport, NY, in 1951. [4]

Kastner earned a BA in philosophy from Princeton University in 1973. [2] and an MD and PhD from Baylor College of Medicine. [2]

Career

Kastner joined the National Institutes of Health in 1985 and as of 2020 is scientific director of the Division of Intramural Research of the National Human Genome Research Institute. His research there "has focused on using genetic and genomic strategies to understand inherited disorders of inflammation". [2]

His work has led to the recognition and treatment of a range of autoinflammatory disorders. In 1987 his was one of two teams which simultaneously discovered and published the genetic mutation which causes FMF, and since then he has worked on disorders including TRAPS and DADA2. [1] In 2020 he was one of the authors of the paper which first described the VEXAS syndrome. [5] [6] As of 2021 he is working on Behçet's disease. [4]

As of 2021 Kastner has said that he plans to leave his post of scientific director at NHGRI "in the next few months". He will continue to work with the 3,000 patients in his clinic, and "find yet more disease genes, understand how they work, and develop new treatments." [1]

The chair of the Crafoord Prize committee, Olle Kämpe  [ sv ], said in 2021:

Dan Kastner is often called the father of autoinflammatory diseases, a title that he thoroughly deserves. His discoveries have taught us a great deal about the immune system and its functions, contributing to effective treatments that reduce the symptoms of diseases from which patients previously suffered enormously, sometimes leading to premature death [4]

Honors and recognition

Kastner was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 [7] and to the National Academy of Medicine in 2012. [8]

In 2018 Kastner was named "Federal Employee of the Year" in the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals ("the Sammies"). [9] [10] and in 2019 he won the Ross Prize for Molecular Medicine. [11]

He was awarded the 2021 Crafoord Prize in Polyarthritis, with the citation "for establishing the concept of autoinflammatory diseases". [4] [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Institutes of Health</span> US government medical research agency

The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH, is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late 1880s and is now part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Many NIH facilities are located in Bethesda, Maryland, and other nearby suburbs of the Washington metropolitan area, with other primary facilities in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and smaller satellite facilities located around the United States. The NIH conducts its own scientific research through the NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP) and provides major biomedical research funding to non-NIH research facilities through its Extramural Research Program.

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is an institute of the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Washington University School of Medicine</span> Medical school in St. Louis, Missouri, US

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis, located in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine shares a campus with Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis Children's Hospital, and the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Collins</span> American physician-scientist (born 1950)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gladstone Institutes</span> American biomedical research organization

Gladstone Institutes is an American independent, non-profit biomedical research organization whose focus is to better understand, prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological conditions such as heart failure, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease. Its researchers study these diseases using techniques of basic and translational science. Another focus at Gladstone is building on the development of induced pluripotent stem cell technology by one of its investigators, 2012 Nobel Laureate Shinya Yamanaka, to improve drug discovery, personalized medicine and tissue regeneration.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Hunt, Katie (2 February 2021). "Mysterious untreatable fevers once devastated whole families. This doctor discovered what caused them". CNN. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
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  3. "Dan Kastner, M.D., Ph.D." NIH Intramural Research Program: Principal Investigators. Archived from the original on 14 December 2020. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "The Crafoord Prize in Polyarthritis 2021". Crafoord Prize. 31 January 2021. Archived from the original on 1 February 2021. Retrieved 1 February 2021.
  5. "VEXAS: how a deadly disease was discovered". www.thenakedscientists.com. 13 November 2020. Archived from the original on 16 March 2021. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  6. Beck, David B.; Ferrada, Marcela A.; Sikora, Keith A.; Ombrello, Amanda K.; Collins, Jason C.; Pei, Wuhong; et al. (27 October 2020). "Somatic Mutations in UBA1 and Severe Adult-Onset Autoinflammatory Disease". New England Journal of Medicine. 383 (27): 2628–2638. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2026834. PMC   7847551 . PMID   33108101.
  7. "Daniel L. Kastner". www.nasonline.org. National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  8. "Daniel L. Kastner, M.D., Ph.D." National Academy of Medicine. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  9. Palmer, Kiara S. (October 2, 2018). "NHGRI Scientific Director Dan Kastner Named 2018 Federal Employee of the Year". Genome.gov. Archived from the original on 9 January 2021. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  10. "Daniel L. Kastner, M.D., Ph.D." Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals. Archived from the original on 14 January 2021. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  11. "Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine: Past winners". Molecular Medicine. Archived from the original on 12 August 2020. Retrieved 27 December 2020.