John D. Baxter, MD
Senior Member and Co-Director of the Diabetes Center, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, and Chief of Endocrinology at The Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX

Dr. Baxter was formerly a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco where he served as Chief of Clinical Endocrinology at the UCSF Parnassus Campus and was Director of the UCSF Metabolic Research Unit. He was also formerly President of The Endocrine Society. His scientific interests have been in understanding hormone action and earlier in the genetic engineering arena. Earlier he was involved in developing recombinant DNA technology for production of medically useful proteins, including the first cloning of the growth hormone and several other genes. More recently, his research has been to understand nuclear receptors and develop compounds that modulate them for treatment of multiple conditions, including atherosclerosis, obesity and diabetes; a major component of this has been to elucidate atomic structures of nuclear receptor domain and use these to understand compound design and receptor function. His students have become professors, department chairs, institute directors, division chiefs, and CEOs, and two have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He has edited leading clinical textbooks on endocrinology and metabolism and one book won the American Medical Association Honorable Mention Writers Award. He played a major role mostly as a founder in several companies, including Scios, SciClone Pharmaceuticals, Karo Bio, Calhoun Vision and Optimus EMR. Honors include the Outstanding Investigator Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Fred Conrad Koch Award, from the Endocrine Society, the Society’s highest honor, and Honorary Doctorate degrees from the Karolinska Institute and University of Kentucky.