PLENARY SPEAKERS
Professor John Achermann trained in Medicine in Cambridge (1991) and Pediatric Endocrinology in London (MD 1997) before undertaking a post-doctoral fellowship in Molecular Medicine at Northwestern University, Chicago, USA (1998-2001). He completed his clinical training with a Clinician Scientist award from The Wellcome Trust and since 2006 has been a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow at UCL GOS Institute of Child Health and an Honorary Consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital. His research interests include adrenal and sex development, genetic mechanisms of disease and nuclear receptor biology. He has published more than 130 original research studies, reviews and chapters, and was awarded the Clinical Endocrinology Trust Medal in 2016.
Professor Narattaphol Charoenphandhu is a Distinguished Professor of Physiology at the Center of Calcium and Bone Research, and the Department of Physiology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand. He received his Ph.D. in Physiology with Dean’s List Award from Mahidol University in 2001, and Doctor of Medicine from Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University in 2004. His research interest covers various multidisciplinary fields pertaining to molecular biology of bone and calcium metabolism, endocrinology, genome-wide study of ion and nutrient transporters, nanoscience of bone-related materials, as well as electrophysiology and biophysics of intestinal epithelium. Dr. Narattaphol has published more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, and contributes as an editorial board member and reviewer of several journals.
Professor Maria Craig is a Paediatric Endocrinologist at the Children’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia; Professor of Paediatric Endocrinology at the University of Sydney and University of New South Wales; and Academic Co-director of Charles Perkins Centre, Westmead. She holds a National Health and Medical Research Council Practitioner Research Fellowship. Her major research focus is childhood diabetes, including its epidemiology and aetiology; and evidenced-based care in paediatric endocrinology. She is principal investigator for the CoRD trial – a world first trial using autologous cord blood to prevent type 1 diabetes; the ENDIA study (Environmental Determinants of Islet Autoimmunity – a pregnancy to early life study) and the Australasian Diabetes Data Network (ADDN) – the national type 1 diabetes database.
Dr. Walter L. Miller is Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Emeritus, at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and was Chief of Endocrinology at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital from 2000-2014. He also holds appointments in the Center for Reproductive Sciences and the Institute for Human Genetics. Dr. Miller received his SB in Philosophy from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1965 and his MD from Duke University in 1970. He did two years of residency in pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and two years of general endocrinology at NIH. In 1974 he moved to UCSF for a third year of residency, a two-year fellowship in biochemistry and one year of pediatric endocrinology before joining the faculty in 1978.
Dr. Miller has been studying the molecular biology of steroid hormone synthesis since 1983. He cloned the genes for numerous steroidogenic enzymes and factors, and discovered the genetic basis of many diseases, including CAH with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome; classic and non-classic lipoid CAH; classic and non-classic cholesterol side-chain cleavage deficiency; 17-hydroxylase deficiency and isolated 17,20 lyase deficiency; pseudo vitamin D-deficiency rickets; P450 oxidoreductase deficiency with and without the Antley-Bixler skeletal malformation syndrome; and the first defects in 3-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (AKR1C2/4). Dr. Miller’s group made basic discoveries in the biochemistry and cell biology of steroidogenesis. They showed that StAR acts outside the mitochondria, and that mitochondrial importation inactivates it. They discovered that 17,20-lyase activity is post-translationally regulated by cytochrome b5 and by P450c17 phosphorylation, that either can saturate androgen synthesis, and that the relevant kinase is p38. He integrated work on different steroidogenic tissues into a coherent scheme, changing the way steroid biosynthesis is conceptualized and taught.
About 80 students, fellows and visiting scientists have worked with Dr. Miller, and 37 have trained in Pediatric Endocrinology under his direction. Miller has received the Ross Research Award from the Western Society for Pediatric Research, the Edwin B. Astwood Award and the Clinical Investigator Award from the Endocrine Society, the Clinical Endocrinology Trust Medal from the British Endocrine Society, the Samuel Rosenthal Foundation Prize for Excellence in Academic Pediatrics, the UCSF Distinguished Faculty Clinical Research Lectureship, the Duke University School of Medicine Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Judson J. VanWyk Prize for Career Achievement from The Pediatric Endocrine Society, the International Award from the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and the Fred Conrad Koch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Endocrine Society.
