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Foundation honors famed researcher, clinician Gordon Snider, MD
Gordon Snider, MD, showed how emphysema is created and changed the direction of lung disease research for decades.
He founded the pulmonary section of the Boston University School of Medicine and was chief of medical service at the Boston VA Medical Center for 14 years.
He served as president of the American Thoracic Society. He trained dozens of young researchers. He served on the Pulmonary Disease Advisory Board of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and innumerable scientific committees.
And he conducted his own ground-breaking research on lung diseases for more than four decades.
Jamie Stoller, MD, helps Foundation President & CEO John Walsh with his bow tie. Stoller is wearing a tie given to him as a gift by Gordon Snider.
The Alpha-1 Foundation presented Snider with a lifetime achievement award at a Boston event in October attended by more than a hundred of his colleagues and researchers he trained – many of them now leading researchers and clinicians themselves.
All the men present were wearing bow ties. The bow tie was Snider’s signature accessory throughout his long career. James (Jamie) Stoller, MD, another “Alpha doc” known for his bow ties, helped many of those present get their ties properly knotted.
“Probably Gordon’s biggest accomplishment was showing that neutrophil elastase has the capacity to create emphysema in animal models,” said Steven Shapiro, MD, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. “His group and others pioneered this concept and changed the focus of pulmonary research.”
Snider and colleagues showed that normal white blood cells called neutrophils can destroy lung tissue and create emphysema, one of the major causes of death in the United States and the world.
Gordon Snider laughs at a speaker’s anecdote during the award luncheon.
Snider’s discovery led him to study alpha-1 antitrypsin, the major “anti-elastase” in the lung, which normally prevents lung damage from neutrophils. He published many studies on Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency.
“Dr. Snider is one of those rare giants, a triple threat – a great researcher, a superb caregiver and teacher,” said Bartolome R. Celli, MD, who was master of ceremonies. Celli is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Snider served for a decade on the Alpha-1 Foundation board of directors and is currently a member of its Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee. The event was also a fundraiser to support future conferences of the Foundation’s Gordon L. Snider Critical Issues Workshop Series.
“Dr. Snider’s leadership helped the Foundation establish a robust research agenda,” said Foundation President & CEO John Walsh. “He emphasized balancing basic and translational research to try to speed scientific discoveries into clinical practice. We were delighted to name our critical issues workshop series in Gordon’s honor.”
Foundation Scientific Director Adam Wanner, MD, gets help with his tie from Ruth Cadwgan, a member of the Foundation Development Committee
This article reprinted from Alpha-1-to-One magazine. Subscriptions are free
