Dr. Fred Gorelick designated the Binder Professor of Internal Medicine

Dr. Fred Sanford Gorelick, newly designated as the Henry J. and Joan W. Binder Professor of Internal Medicine, focuses his research on the mechanisms that initiate pancreatitis, a severe inflammatory disease that causes death in up to 5% of patients.

Dr. Fred Sanford Gorelick, newly designated as the Henry J. and Joan W. Binder Professor of Internal Medicine, focuses his research on the mechanisms that initiate pancreatitis, a severe inflammatory disease that causes death in up to 5% of patients.

Dr. Fred Sanford Gorelick (Photo by Robert Lisak)

Pancreatitis begins with the premature activation of pancreatic digestive enzymes within the acinar cell, inhibition of secretion, activation of inflammatory pathways, and cell death. Gorelick’s lab studies the pathways that initiate disease with a goal of identifying therapeutic targets. 

After completing medical school and internal medicine training at the University of Missouri, Gorelick studied gastroenterology at Yale. Following his clinical training, he began basic science training with Dr. James Jamieson at Yale. During that period, he described calcium-calmodulin dependent protein kinase II and subsequently worked with Dr. Paul Greengard of Rockefeller University to examine the enzyme’s mechanism of activation, a response critical to neuronal memory. Gorelick’s later work has focused on the mechanisms of acute pancreatitis and how digestive enzymes, such as trypsin, are activated within the pancreas during this disease.

Gorelick also serves as deputy director for the Yale Physician Scientist Program and directs a year-long course for the group that links basic science to clinical disease. He has also been director of the Yale Program in Investigative Gastroenterology for more than a decade.

The Yale professor has contributed scores of articles, chapters, and reviews to edited volumes and journals. He serves as a section editor for the journal Current Opinions in Gastroenterology. He has been honored for his teaching at Yale with the Alvin Feinstein mentoring award and the Bohmfalk Teaching Award and, on four occasions, with the Howard Spiro GI Teaching Award.

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