New endowed professorship honors Dr. Aaron Vinik
A new professorship has been created to honor Aaron Vinik, MD, PhD, one of the school’s most prolific physician/scientists.
The Aaron Vinik Endowed Professorship has been established in recognition of the internationally known endocrinologist and leading expert on diabetic neuropathy and neuroendocrine tumors. The professorship, which will be maintained at EVMS in perpetuity, will be awarded soon to a deserving endocrinologist and researcher at EVMS. Prior to his retirement, Dr. Vinik held the Murray Waitzer Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research and was Director of Research at the EVMS Strelitz Diabetes Center and a professor of internal medicine.
“We are grateful to all who generously supported our efforts to establish this great honor for this great man,” said Alfred Abuhamad, MD, Interim President, Provost and Dean of the School of Medicine at EVMS, speaking at a recent ceremony to honor Dr. Vinik. “It is evident by the overwhelming generosity from his peers, his colleagues, his patients and friends from all over the world, that Dr. Vinik touched the lives of so many during his illustrious career.”
EVMS recruited Dr. Vinik in 1990 to lead research efforts at the Strelitz Diabetes Center. With support from the NIH and other organizations, he and his team developed improved tools for the diagnosis and management of diabetic-associated nerve pain, known as neuropathy. His pioneering work in neuropathy drew patients from across the country and helped win him international acclaim.
Dr. Vinik studied new compounds for better pain control and demonstrated that the risk of falls improves dramatically with exercise and pain reduction. In particular his research demonstrated that gene therapy can improve nerve function, that nerves can be induced to regenerate and restore sensation and that autonomic nerve damage, the strongest predictor of premature cardiovascular demise, may be reversible.
Dr. Vinik also led the discovery of a gene that stimulates the growth of pancreatic islet cells. Based on the breadth and depth of his research, Dr. Vinik was selected Virginia Outstanding Scientist of the Year in 2005. He later received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society and was elected as a Master of the American College of Physicians.
Dr. Vinik helped launch an annual event, the Turning the Tide on Diabetes Conference at EVMS. Now in its eighth year, the medical conference taps the expertise of endocrinologists from the Strelitz Diabetes Center as well as that of other experts from across the nation, to highlight the latest knowledge in the care of individuals with diabetes. The conference draws hundreds of practicing physicians and other practitioners from across the mid-Atlantic.
Dr. Vinik and his wife, Etta Vinik, created a quality-of-life assessment tool which has been translated into 70 languages and is used globally in research to screen people with diabetes, identify patients with neuropathy and evaluate the effectiveness of new drugs for the treatment of neuropathy.
At the close of the recent ceremony, Elias Siraj, MD, Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders and Director of the Strelitz Diabetes Center at EVMS, added his praise for Dr. Vinik.
“I would like to thank Dr. Vinik for the decades of outstanding service he provided to our patients, students, trainees, our institution, our community and the diabetes community globally,” Dr. Siraj said. “He has left an outstanding and extraordinary legacy at EVMS and beyond.”