Andrew Fyfe Stewart, M.D.
Director, Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism Institute
Irene and Dr. Arthur M Fishberg Professor
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, NY
Dr. Stewart received his BS from Trinity College, and his M.D. from Columbia University. He was a postdoc at Yale, where he rose to tenured Professor. He served as Chief of Endocrinology at the University of Pittsburgh before becoming Director of the Diabetes Obesity Metabolism Institute at Mount Sinai in 2012. In 2015, his group discovered the first drugs able to induce human beta cell replication, findings that have been reproduced around the world in pharma and academia. In 2017 and 2020, they defined the genomic pathways underlying beta cell expansion and insulin over-secretion in human insulinomas: a “wiring diagram” for human beta cell regenerative drug discovery. In 2019 and 2020, they reported that combination treatment with harmine and TGF-beta inhibitors or GLP1 receptor agonists dramatically increases human beta cell proliferation. The work has clear translational implications for Types 1 as well as Type 2 diabetes, both of which result from an absolute or relative deficiency of insulin-producing beta cells. This work has now moved to human clinical trials and will be the subject of his presentation.
He has published more than 270 papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Science Translational Medicine, Cell Metabolism, Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and others. He has had continuous NIH grant support for the past 40 years. He served as Councilor and Secretary-Treasurer of the Endocrine Society, and was the 2008 recipient of the Endocrine Society’s Gerald Aurbach Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement. He served as the Chair of the Endocrine Society Meeting in 1998 and American Diabetes Association Annual Meetings for 2010 and 2011. His human beta cell drug discovery work was recognized by the JDRF at their Annual Gala in New York and the Riggs-Levine Diabetes Symposium Outstanding Investigator Award in 2022.