Draft:Mark T. Gladwin

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Mark T. Gladwin, MD, is an American physician-scientist. He is currently serving as the 31st Dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He holds the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor Endowed Chair and an academic appointment in the School's Department of Medicine and a secondary appointment in the Department of Physiology. He was appointed Dean August 1, 2022.

In his role as Dean, Dr. Gladwin leads 6,100 faculty and staff, and 2,500 students and trainees, and oversees an annual operating budget of $1.2 billion.

Dr. Gladwin is a leading vascular, heart, and lung physician-scientist who has specialized in the study of reactive nitrogen molecules, like nitric oxide and nitrite, and how they regulate blood flow via reactions with hemoglobin. He maintains an active, federally funded research laboratory that is conducting studies and clinical trials in the fields of nitric oxide, nitrite and vascular biology. Among his major scientific discoveries is the finding that the nitrite salt is a biological signaling molecule that regulates physiological and pathological hypoxic responses, blood pressure and flow, and dynamic mitochondrial electron transport. He characterized the role of hemoglobin and myoglobin as signaling nitrite reductases that regulate NO production under hypoxia. His seminal publication on this topic in 2003 has been cited more than 2000 times and is listed by Nature Medicine in its top ten Classic Collection. This work has led to the development and licensing of intravenous, oral, and inhaled nitrite as a human therapeutic.

In addition to studies of nitrite, he characterized a novel mechanism of disease, hemolysis-associated endothelial dysfunction. This work has described a state of resistance to NO in patients with sickle cell disease, malaria, transfusion of aged blood, and other hemolytic conditions, caused by scavenging of nitric oxide by hemoglobin that is released into plasma during hemolysis. These studies translated to clinical and epidemiological descriptions of a human disease syndrome, hemolysis-associated pulmonary hypertension, which is very common in patients suffering from sickle cell anemia. Most recently, his he and his research team engineered a protein that reverses carbon monoxide poisoning in mice, a significant discovery that could potentially lead to the creation of the first antidote in humans to the often deadly poisoning, which accounts for more than 50,000 emergency room visits in the United States annually, and is one of the leading global causes of poisoning death.

He is currently leading a 22-site Phase II clinical trial in France, Brazil, and the U.S. that is exploring whether an innovative type of blood transfusion that uses the patient's own blood can improve outcomes and extend survival in patients with Sickle Cell Disease, which overwhelmingly impacts the Black community, reducing their average lifespan by 22 years.

Early Life

Dr. Gladwin was born in Palo Alto, California, and was raised in various locations in the U.S. as well as in remote locations in Ghana, Guatemala, and Mexico. Both of his parents were anthropologists who studied in these locations. His father, Hugh Gladwin, Ph.D., is a distinguished anthropologist and Professor Emeritus at Florida International University. His research focuses on using cognitive decision making, urban theory, survey research, and GIS tools to understand diverse urban settings, particularly in relation to natural systems like the South Florida ecosystem and extreme events like hurricanes and climate change. He has also contributed to disaster research and conducted polls on Cuban-American opinions. His mother, Christina Gladwin, PhD, who passed away in 2015, was a respected social scientist and development economist at the University of Florida, known for her work on food producers' decision-making processes. In addition to her academic achievements, she was known for philanthropic ventures, including the creation of "Global Toddlers," an organization which produces children's clothes with a women's cooperative in Zambia.

Education

Dr. Gladwin earned his bachelor's and medical degrees from the University of Miami's six-year honors program in medical education. He completed his internship and chief residency in internal medicine at the Oregon Health Sciences University, followed by a critical care medicine fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, and a pulmonary fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Career

Prior to joining the University of Maryland, Dr. Gladwin's career included serving in the roles of physician-scientist, clinician, educator, and academic leader at two institutions, the University of Pittsburgh and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). At the NIH, he served as a critical care fellow, senior research fellow section head for the Sickle Cell Nitric Oxide Therapeutic and Vascular Therapeutics sections, director of the functional genomics core, and Chief of the Pulmonary and Vascular Medicine Branch of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

In 2008, Dr. Gladwin was recruited to the University of Pittsburgh to serve as Chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine (PACCM) and the inaugural Director of the Vascular Medicine Institute. He assumed the role of Chair of the Department of Medicine in 2015, overseeing more than 800 faculty members and combined clinical and research revenues approaching $300 million. During his tenure, the NIH funding for the Department of Medicine increased by more than 25%, and was ranked in the top ten funded Departments of Medicine in NIH funding for the last 4 years of his tenure, according to the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research. He also worked to establish clinical programs to increase patient access to quality care and supported the development of signature programs in clinical analytics, telemedicine, e-consultation, critical care, specialty and hospitalist services, and multidisciplinary Clinical Centers of Excellence across 10 divisions.

Research

Dr. Gladwin has published approximately 500 manuscripts (google scholar i-10 index of 449 and is h-index of 134). His scientific discoveries include the finding that nitrite salt is a biological signaling molecule that regulates physiological and pathological hypoxic responses, blood pressure and flow, and dynamic mitochondrial electron transport. He also characterized the role of hemoglobin and myoglobin as signaling nitrite reductases that regulate nitric oxide production under hypoxia. His 2003 publication on this work has been cited more than 1,800 times and is in Nature Medicine's Classic Collection.

Dr. Gladwin's research has contributed to the fields of vascular and nitric oxide biology. These discoveries have shed light on fundamental processes in the body related to blood vessel function, oxygen regulation, and the role of nitric oxide, and they have implications for understanding and treating various diseases related to these mechanisms.

His recent study (with Anthony DeMartino, PhD), published in Nature Chemical Biology, found that heme, an iron-containing compound abundant in circulation and in all of our cells, binds to Nitric Oxide (NO) and ferries it around the vascular system. This enables NO to regulate blood flow, blood pressure, blood clot formation, and likely other signaling processes involved in healing blood vessels damaged by a heart attack or stroke.

Dr. Gladwin's laboratory recently published a study in Nature Communications on discovery of the first-ever link between hemoglobin-like protein and normal cardiac development.

Author

Dr. Gladwin has co-authored several textbooks, including various editions of Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple, (Medmaster Series), with international editions, Microbiologia Clínica. Ridiculamente Fácil (Portuguese Brazilian Edition), 2010; Sugu wakaru irasuto biseibutsugaku (Japanese Edition, 2007). The book provides a brief, clear, thorough, and accessible approach to understanding clinical microbiology. The 2022 edition includes a a new chapter on the SARS-COV-2 Virus and COVID-19 disease. He also co-authored Critical Care and Hospitalist Medicine Made Ridiculously Simple, 2022; and Sickle Cell Disease, 2021.

Awards

Dr. Gladwin has received the US Public Health Service Achievement Award, the NIH Director's Award for Mentoring, the NIH Clinical Center Director's Award for Science, and the NIH Merit Award. He also received the Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishments from the American Thoracic Society, and was named an American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist.

Board Membership

Dr. Gladwin serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Globin Solutions, Inc., a pre-clinical stage biopharmaceutical company that is researching and working to develop a rapidly acting antidote for carbon monoxide poisoning, the most common human poisoning.

Personal Life

Dr. Gladwin is married to Dr. Tammy Shields, an epidemiologist and scientific investigator who has published research on cancer epidemiology and prevention. They have three children. Dr. Gladwin is an avid soccer and fitness enthusiast, currently playing competitive soccer in an over-40 outdoor premier league.