H. Franklin Bunn | |
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Born | Morristown, New Jersey, U.S. | July 7, 1935
Alma mater | Harvard and University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine |
Known for | Co-discovery of glycated hemoglobin |
Awards | Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biochemistry |
Institutions | Harvard Medical School |
H. Franklin Bunn (born July 7, 1935) is an American physician, hematologist and biochemist at Harvard Medical School, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is known for his co-discovery of glycated hemoglobin or A1C, a major diagnostic indicator of pre-diabetes and diabetes. [1]
Bunn attended the Pingry School in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He received the AB degree from Harvard in 1957 majoring in chemistry and the MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1961. After a medical residency at New York Hospital, he completed a fellowship in hematology at the Thorndike Laboratory under mentorship of James Jandl.
Frank Bunn has been a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School since 1979. From 1976 to 1982 he was Director of the Hematology Division at Brigham and Women's Hospital. From 1977 to 1989 he was an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. For nearly 50 years Bunn played a major role in training medical students at Harvard Medical School, and residents and fellows at Brigham and Women's Hospital. From 1991 until 1998, he directed the Harvard-Markey Program in Biomedical Sciences, which provides graduate students an added year of training in human biology and disease pathophysiology.
The first 20 years of Bunn's research focused on hemoglobin. [2] His major work included
The second 20 years of Bunn's research focused on identification of domains on erythropoietin (EPO) that bind to its receptor, and on characterizing the oxygen-dependent degradation domain of the HIFa transcription factor responsible for hypoxic induction of EPO and other physiologically relevant proteins.
Bunn has been married to Elizabeth Godard for over 50 years. They have three sons, George, Emory, and Andrew, and five grandsons.
Hemoglobin is a protein containing iron that facilitates the transport of oxygen in red blood cells. Almost all vertebrates contain hemoglobin, with the exception of the fish family Channichthyidae and the tissues of some invertebrate animals. Hemoglobin in the blood carries oxygen from the respiratory organs to the other tissues of the body, where it releases the oxygen to enable aerobic respiration which powers the animal's metabolism. A healthy human has 12 to 20 grams of hemoglobin in every 100 mL of blood. Hemoglobin is a metalloprotein, a chromoprotein, and globulin.
Blood glucose monitoring is the use of a glucose meter for testing the concentration of glucose in the blood (glycemia). Particularly important in diabetes management, a blood glucose test is typically performed by piercing the skin to draw blood, then applying the blood to a chemically active disposable 'test-strip'. The other main option is continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Different manufacturers use different technology, but most systems measure an electrical characteristic and use this to determine the glucose level in the blood. Skin-prick methods measure capillary blood glucose, whereas CGM correlates interstitial fluid glucose level to blood glucose level. Measurements may occur after fasting or at random nonfasting intervals, each of which informs diagnosis or monitoring in different ways.
Hematology is the branch of medicine concerned with the study of the cause, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases related to blood. It involves treating diseases that affect the production of blood and its components, such as blood cells, hemoglobin, blood proteins, bone marrow, platelets, blood vessels, spleen, and the mechanism of coagulation. Such diseases might include hemophilia, sickle cell anemia, blood clots (thrombus), other bleeding disorders, and blood cancers such as leukemia, multiple myeloma, and lymphoma. The laboratory analysis of blood is frequently performed by a medical technologist or medical laboratory scientist.
Drugs used in diabetes treat diabetes mellitus by decreasing the glucose level in the blood. With the exception of insulin, most GLP receptor agonists, and pramlintide, all are administered orally and are thus also called oral hypoglycemic agents or oral antihyperglycemic agents. There are different classes of hypoglycemic drugs, and their selection depends on the nature of diabetes, age, and situation of the person, as well as other factors.
Glycated hemoglobin is a form of hemoglobin (Hb) that is chemically linked to a sugar. Most monosaccharides, including glucose, galactose and fructose, spontaneously bond with hemoglobin when present in the bloodstream. However, glucose is only 21% as likely to do so as galactose and 13% as likely to do so as fructose, which may explain why glucose is used as the primary metabolic fuel in humans.
Fructosamines are compounds that result from glycation reactions between a sugar and a primary amine, followed by isomerization via the Amadori rearrangement. Biologically, fructosamines are recognized by fructosamine-3-kinase, which may trigger the degradation of advanced glycation end-products. Fructosamine can also refer to the specific compound 1-amino-1-deoxy-D-fructose (isoglucosamine), first synthesized by Nobel laureate Hermann Emil Fischer in 1886.
Samuel Rahbar was an Iranian scientist who discovered the linkage between diabetes and HbA1C, a form of hemoglobin used primarily to identify plasma glucose concentration over time.
The Amadori rearrangement is an organic reaction describing the acid or base catalyzed isomerization or rearrangement reaction of the N-glycoside of an aldose or the glycosylamine to the corresponding 1-amino-1-deoxy-ketose. The reaction is important in carbohydrate chemistry, specifically the glycation of hemoglobin.
AIDA is a freeware computer program that permits the interactive simulation of plasma insulin and blood glucose profiles for demonstration, teaching, self-learning, and research purposes. Originally developed in 1991, it has been updated and enhanced since, and made available without charge from 1996 on the World Wide Web. The program, which is still being updated, has gone through a number of revisions and developments in the 16+ years since its original internet launch. During this time over 2.5 million visits have been logged at the AIDA Websites and more than 400,000 copies of the program have been downloaded. Further copies of the simulator have been made available, in the past, on diskette by the system developers and from the British Diabetic Association (BDA) — now called 'Diabetes UK' — London, England, following the BDA's own independent evaluation of the software. More than 1,075,000 diabetes simulations have been run via a web-based version of the AIDA diabetes simulator.
Hemoglobin subunit alpha, Hemoglobin, alpha 1, is a hemoglobin protein that in humans is encoded by the HBA1 gene.
David Gordon Nathan is a pediatrician and hematologist. He is known for his authorship of Nathan and Oski's Hematology of Infancy and Childhood, a standard reference in pediatrics, currently in its seventh edition. Nathan remains an author on the current edition. Now retired, he was Robert A. Stranahan professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and served as president of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. He was born in Boston.
1,5-Anhydroglucitol, also known as 1,5-AG, is a naturally occurring monosaccharide found in nearly all foods. Blood concentrations of 1,5-anhydroglucitol decrease during times of hyperglycemia above 180 mg/dL, and return to normal levels after approximately 2 weeks in the absence of hyperglycemia. As a result, it can be used for people with either type-1 or type-2 diabetes mellitus to identify glycemic variability or a history of high blood glucose even if current glycemic measurements such as hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) and blood glucose monitoring have near normal values. Despite this possible use and its approval by the FDA, 1,5-AG tests are rarely ordered. There is some data suggesting that 1,5-AG values are useful to fill the gap and offer complementary information to HbA1c and fructosamine tests.
Helen Margaret Ranney was an American doctor and hematologist who made significant contributions to research on sickle-cell anemia.
Gemigliptin (rINN), sold under the brand name Zemiglo, is an oral anti-hyperglycemic agent of the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor class of drugs. Glucose lowering effects of DPP-4 inhibitors are mainly mediated by GLP-1 and gastric inhibitory polypeptide (GIP) incretin hormones which are inactivated by DPP-4.
Dulaglutide, sold under the brand name Trulicity among others, is a medication used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in combination with diet and exercise. It is also approved in the United States for the reduction of major adverse cardiovascular events in adults with type 2 diabetes who have established cardiovascular disease or multiple cardiovascular risk factors. It is a once-weekly injection.
Stuart Holland Orkin is an American physician, stem cell biologist and researcher in pediatric hematology-oncology. He is the David G. Nathan Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Orkin's research has focused on the genetic basis of blood disorders. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Jyoti Bhusan Chatterjea (1919–1972) was an Indian hematologist, medical academic and the director of Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, He was known for his hematological and clinical studies of Hemoglobin E/β-thalassaemia and was an elected fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 1966.
Phaedon Fessas (1922-2015) was a Greek Professor of Medicine at the Medical School of Athens University. He was Director of the 1st Department of Internal Medicine at the Laikon Hospital in Athens (1969-1989), where he established a very strong Hematology Division, his particular subspecialty. Professor Fessas was a clinician, teacher and researcher. His main research interest was thalassemia.
Mayer B. Davidson is an American physician and author who is an expert on diabetes and the algorithmic dosing of insulin. A Professor of Medicine at both the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Davidson has studied algorithmic dosing of insulin as a means of controlling diabetes in insulin-using patients.
Nancy Berliner is an American hematologist. In January 2020, Berliner was named the editor-in-chief of the journal Blood.