Laurie Glimcher

Laurie Hollis Glimcher is an American physician-scientist who was appointed President and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in February 2016. Laurie Glimcher is the daughter of Melvin Glimcher, who was a pioneer in the development in of artificial limbs while the chair of the Massachusetts General Hospital Orthopedics Department. She is the wife of Gregory A. Petsko, head of biochemistry at Brandeis University. Glimcher followed in the footsteps of her father by later becoming a full professor at Harvard; the two became research partners. Laurie Glimcher has been a pioneering force in the immerging field of osteobiology and immunology. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She received the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2014 for her work in the field of immunology and her research regarding the control of immune responses. Glimcher received her bachelor's degree at Radcliffe College in 1972 and her M.D. at Harvard Medical School in 1976.

Glimcher's research has focused on the immune system; she is known for early work with T cell differentiation, her discovery that Schnurri-3 regulates osteoblasts which led to a collaboration with Merck & Co., and her discovery of the role played by XBP-1 in lipogenesis and the unfolded protein response. Glimcher's role helped discover Schnurri-3 (Shn3 for short) is a large zinc finger protein distantly related to Drosophila. Shn is a potent and essential regulator of adult bone formation. Her research has had implications for understanding asthma, HIV, inflammatory bowel disease, and osteoporosis, and around 2016, on cancer immunotherapy.

She joined the board of directors of Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1997. Bristol-Myers Squibb is a pharmaceutical company. She also worked with Merck, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Her ties with the pharmaceutical company were beneficial as she grew to have a more prominent role in autoimmune disease and cancer research. Her experience and connections with both fields helped bridge the gap between the lab and the distributor.

Glimcher was the Irene Heinz Given Professor of Immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Clinically, she is a specialist in osteoporosis.

From 2012 to 2016 Glimcher served as the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and the Cornell University Provost for Medical Affairs.

In February 2016, Laurie Glimcher was named the next president and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Glimcher was considered for the position for the Dean of Harvard Medical School but turned the position down in order to become the president of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institue. At Dana-Farber, Glimcher is collaborating on research which strives to find methods of combating cancer from within the human immune system. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institue is an institution that is affiliated with Harvard, as it currently is one of it's teaching hospitals. Glimcher, who was the first female dean of any medical school in New York state, will become the first president to lead the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Laurie Glimcher is a part of many different organizations and memberships. She is currently a part of:

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• American Association of Immunologists
• American Society for Clinical Investigation
• American Association of Physicians
• American Association for the Advancement of Science

Laurie Glimcher has been considered a champion of women's rights in the scientific by many of her peers. While she was at Harvard, Glimcher she hired lab techs with her own research money to support her postdoctoral fellows after they had babies so that they were allowed to leave by 6. This carried on into Glimcher's involvement with the National Institutes of Health to create a similar postdoc grant program caring for family members.

Glimcher served on the 2005 Larry Summers Task Force for Women in Science and Engineering, where she expressed her disappointment in the rate of progress for women in science. She joined this task force after a controversy was sparked when former Harvard president Larry Summers suggested that women might be able to innately do less in science. Although she was on the Larry Summers committee, Glimcher still believes that there is still more work to be done. She was quoted as saying: "There are not enough women in senior leadership positions, period. It hasn't gotten a heck of a lot better since I was in medical school". After she was appointed to Cornell's medical school she immediately made changes regarding women's rights. She established paid maternity leave, created day care centers and another postdoc grant program for primary caregivers. Upon arriving at Cornell there were 0 out of 19 clinical department chairs filled by women; as of today there are 2.

From October 2015 to February 2016, Glimcher was the target of eight protests by animal rights activists angered by New York Blood Center's abandonment of 66 chimpanzees that had been used in medical research; Glimcher was a member of the board of directors, which had voted to stop paying for care of the chimpanzees before she joined it. Glimcher said that the decision was made before her term on the board and said: "As a scientist, I strongly support the ethical and humane treatment of animals used in research.... I have a great respect for these animals and recognize the value they bring in our pursuit of new cures for devastating human diseases." The New York Blood Center had funded a Liberian lab since 1974 where the chimps had been used for testing of different viruses. The New York Blood Center ended their funding of the Liberian lab in March 2015.

Glimcher became interested in immunology during her first year of medical school at Harvard. There she took interest dysregulation in autoimmune diseases and, in her fourth year at Harvard, discovered the protein known as Nk1.1(see natural killer T cell), which soon became widely recognized across the field of immunology. For this discovery, Glimcher became the first woman to receive the Soma Weiss Award, an honor her father had received 26 years earlier. During this time, Glimcher worked with mentor Bill Paul, who strongly encouraged her to continue her research independently after completing medical school. During her second year of residency, Glimcher realized why she felt so drawn to this area of research. “What always fascinated me was not so much treating patients with disease, but figuring out why they had the disease,” says Glimcher.

Glimcher currently heads her own lab for research in immunology. She has been interested in studying the ties between ER stress system in neurons and immune function and neuro-degeneration. Her past work has involved regulation of immune function and has shifted towards osteobiology with a focus on the bone disease osteoporosis. Her Harvard lab has a three-year contract with Merck for the drug Fosamax, a treatment for osteoporosis. Glimcher’s more current research looks to answer the question, “how does the immune system and the ER stress system in neurons impact neurodegenerative diseases?”.