2024 McGarry Symposium

Sponsored by the Touchstone Center for Diabetes Research

Event Topics:
 

8:35-9:30 a.m.
Deletion of TorsinA, an AAA+ ATPase Results in Accumulation of Lipid Droplets in the ER and Severe Reductions in VLDL Secretion
(Presented by Henry Ginsberg, M.D., Ph.D., Columbia University)
 

9:30-10:15 a.m.
Exploring Dietary Interventions to Target Cancer and Obesity
(Presented by Maralice Conacci-Sorrell, Ph.D., UT Southwestern)

10:45-11:45 a.m.
Thermogenic Adipose Tissue: From Form to Function
(Presented by Paul Cohen, M.D., Ph.D., Rockefeller University)

12:30-1:30 p.m.
Neural Mechanisms that Control Food Intake and Metabolism
(Presented by Martin Meyers, Ph.D., University of Michigan)

1:30-2:15 p.m.
Insights into Tumor-Host Interactions Driving Cachexia
(Presented by Rodney Infane, M.D., Ph.D.)

1:30-2:15 p.m.
Searching for Diamonds in the Sand from GWAS to Molecular Insights into Islet Cell Dysfunction
(Presented by Anna Gloyn, Ph.D., Stanford University)

About:

The McGarry Symposium is named in honor of John Dennis McGarry, Ph.D., who dedicated his 34-year career to diabetes research and made a series of groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of mammalian metabolism. Dr. McGarry died in 2002.

Originally from Widnes, UK, Dr. McGarry earned his bachelor and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Manchester, before completing post-doctoral training at the University of Liverpool and the University College of Wales. 

In 1968, he began working in the laboratory of Daniel W. Foster, M.D., who became UT Southwestern's third Chair of Internal Medicine.

Dr. McGarry's scientific career included discovering that the molecule maloynyl-CoA, an intermediate in de novo fatty acid synthesis, was also responsible for the regulation of hepatic fatty acid oxydation and ketogenesis, by virtue of its ability to inhibit the enzyme carnitine palmitoyltransferase. This mechanism for the reciprocal regulation of hepatic fatty acid synthesis and oxidation has since been shown to be the basis for regulation of fatty acid oxidation in all body tissues.

In the early 1980s, he demonstrated the importance of the "indirect" gluconeogenic pathway for the synthesis of hepatic glycogen.

Dr. McGarry's proposal that disordered metabolism of fatty acids, rather than that of glucose, may be the primary cause in the development of type 2 diabetes revolutionized thinking among diabetes researchers.