Ralph Snyderman

Ralph Snyderman is chancellor emeritus at Duke University, James B. Duke Professor of Medicine, and executive director of the Duke Center for Personalized Health Care.He served as chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine from 1989 to July 2004.Under his leadership, Duke University created the Duke University Health System (DUHS) to develop and operate a comprehensive health delivery system, and he was its founding President and Chief Executive Officer.DUHS, with its practice networks, ambulatory care centers, home health services, community hospitals, university hospital, and satellite collaborations demonstrated the power of academic medicine to deliver the best of care to broad communities.Snyderman helped lead the creation of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, the largest academic clinical research organization worldwide.During his tenure, Duke University Hospital was ranked6th overall in the nation and its medical school ranked 4th. Snyderman is a leader in the conception and development of personalized health care, an evolving model of national health care delivery. He has articulated the need to move the current focus of health care from the treatment of disease-events to personalized, predictive, preventive, and participatory care that is focused on the patient. Ralph Snyderman was the recipient of the 2012 David E. Rogers Award from the Association of American Medical Collegeswho recognized him as "The Father of Personalized Medicine." He is a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges (chair 2002-2003), Association of American Physicians (President 2003-2004), American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and theNational Academy of Medicine.

Snyderman was born on March 30, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Russian immigrants Morris and Ida Snyderman.  A graduate of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, Snyderman received his MD in 1965 from SUNY Downstate Medical Center. He served his internship and residency in medicine at Duke and later worked as a Public Health Officer doing research in immunology at the NIH.

Snyderman accepted his first faculty appointment at Duke in 1972 and by 1984, he was the Frederic M. Hanes Professor of Medicine and Immunology and chief of the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology.  His research contributed to the understanding of how white blood cells respond to chemical signals to mediate host defense or tissue damage.He is internationally recognized for his contributions in inflammation research.  In 1987, Snyderman left Duke to join Genentech, Inc., the pioneering biomedical technology firm, as Senior Vice President for medical research and development. While at Genentech, he led the development and licensing of major biotechnology therapeutics.  He returned to Duke in 1989 as Chancellor for Health Affairs, Duke University, a position he held until 2004.Since then, Snyderman established and leads the Duke Center for Personalized Health Care which provides a platform for research directed at developing new models of care.

Snyderman’s research focused on defining the mechanisms by which leukocytes accumulate at sites of inflammation.  He developed the first reliable in vitro technology to quantify leukocyte chemotaxis.  His work led to the standard methodology to study this critical component of inflammation.  He identified C5a, a cleavage product of the fifth component of complement (C), as a major chemotactic factor which was produced by C activation or by proteolytic cleavage of C5.  Snyderman’s work helped open the field of inflammation research to  scientific analysis and lay the foundation of our current understanding of leukocyte activation by chemoattractants and chemokine production by activated mononuclear cells.

Snyderman’s current work is focused on the development and implementation of Personalized Health Care – a personalized, predictive, preventive, and participatory approach to care. This concept is facilitating the transformation of health care from the current disease-oriented approach to one that focuses on personalized health planning and is increasingly seen as a solution to our national health care dilemma.TheDuke Center for Personalized Health Care fosters the adoption of proactive, personalized, and patient-driven care into clinical practice, develops and tests novel clinical approaches to deliver personalized health care and functions as a think tank to foster innovation in health care delivery. The center is currently working on multiple projects to study the feasibility and clinical outcomes of integrating personalized health care into ongoing clinical settings.

Snyderman has contributed to over 400 scientific manuscripts.

• 1978   McLaughlin Award for Inflammation Research
• 1985   Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, Federal Republic of Germany
• 1992   Ciba-Geigy Morris Ziff Award, for lifetime achievements in inflammation research
• 1993   Bonazinga Award for Excellence in Leukocyte Biology Research
• 2003Ellis Island Medal of Honor
• 2003Bravewell Leadership Award
• 2007Leadership in Personalized Medicine Award from the Personalized Medicine Coalition
• 2008 Industrial Research Institute (IRI) Medal
• 2008 Frost & Sullivan's 2008 North American HealthCare Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2010 Bioscience Leader Emeriti by the North Carolina Association for Biomedical Research
• 2011 William B. Anlyan, MD, Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2012 David E. Rogers Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges
• 2014 North Carolina Life Sciences Leadership Award
• 2016 Personalized Medicine World Conference's Pioneer Award