DR. SEVGI RODAN Sevgi Rodan started her career in bone biology as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Connecticut Health Center working with Gideon Rodan, studying signaling by PTH and calcitonin in isolated calvarial bone cells. In collaboration with Bob Majeska, she also isolated and cloned cells from a rat osteosarcoma leading to the development of stable cell lines representing various differentiated stages of osteoblasts.

After moving to Merck & Co., she continued to study osteoblasts, including establishment of other cell lines from rat long bones as well as from calvaria. In the early 1990s, in an effort to identify novel drug targets, which may prevent bone loss, she focused her research in osteoclasts.

She led an effort to investigate the role of ALPHA v BETA 3 integrin, a highly abundant cell surface protein expressed in osteoclasts, in bone loss. In the mid 1990s, she and her colleagues initiated research to identify potent inhibitors of cathepsin K, a predominant cysteine protease in osteoclasts, shown to be capable of degrading type I collagen. These novel inhibitors of bone loss are being developed for treatment of osteoporosis.

STEVEN R. CUMMINGS MD, FACP Emeritus Professor of Medicine and of Epidemiology, Director of San Francisco Coordinating Center and Director of Clinical Research at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute. Steven R. Cummings directs the SF Coordinating Center, which conducts several large multicenter studies of osteoporosis and breast cancer.

He completed his MD, Residency in Internal Medicine, and Fellowship in Clinical Epidemiology at UCSF and served as Chief of General Internal Medicine, Associate Chair of Medicine for Clinical Research. He co-founded the Postgraduate Clinical Research Training Program at UCSF 20 years ago and is co-author of the textbook “Designing Clinical research”. He led the Fracture Intervention Trial, and was the first to show that raloxifene reduced the risk of fractures and breast cancers. He has trained and mentored dozens of young researchers interested in women’s health and clinical research.

 

Nicola C. Partridge Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Physiology and Biophysics at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. A graduate of the University of Western Australia for both her B.Sc. (Honors) and Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Dr. Partridge subsequently underwent postdoctoral training at the University of Melbourne and at Washington University in St. Louis.

She has been continuously independently funded by NASA or NIH since 1987. She has 110 publications. Her research interests are PTH regulation of osteoblastic gene expression and transcription. She is internationally recognized, and her studies have contributed to the understanding of how PTH elicits both catabolic and anabolic effects on bone. Dr. Partridge has also functioned in many capacities for ASBMR and FASEB, including being the present Chair of the Women in Bone and Mineral Research Committee. For this extensive service, she received the ASBMR Shirley Hohl Award in 2002.