Rudolph Leibel

Rudolph Leibel
Rudolph Leibel, 2012
Born	1942 (age 74–75) United States of America
Residence	United States
Citizenship	United States
Fields	Molecular Genetics, Obesity, Diabetes Mellitus, Pediatrics
Institutions	Boston Children's Hospital, Cambridge Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Rockefeller University, Columbia University
Alma mater	Colgate University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Known for	Co-Discovery of Leptin, Advancing the Understanding of Obesity
Influences	Jules Hirsch, Douglas L. Coleman
Notable awards	National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine Member; TOPS Scientific Achievement Award; NIH/HHS Intragency Committee on Human Nutrition Research; New York State Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR) Distinguished Professor; Albert Einstein College of Medicine Distinguished Alumnus Award; Berthold Medal of the European Society of Endocrinology, Federation Award for Biomedical Research of the Federation of Medical Scientific Societies of the Netherlands, Leiden University; National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Federal Advisory Council Member; The Christopher J. Murphy Professorship of Diabetes Research at Columbia University; Honoris Causa Doctorate, Louisiana State University
Spouse	Lulu Leibel

Rudolph Leibel, MD, (born 1942) is the Christopher J. Murphy Professor of Diabetes Research, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, and Director of the Division of Molecular Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics. He is also Co-Director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center and Executive Director of the Russell and Angelica Berrie Program in Cellular Therapy, Co-Director of the New York Obesity Research Center and the Columbia University Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center.

Leibel's co-discovery at Rockefeller University of the hormone leptin, and cloning of the leptin and leptin receptor genes, has had a major role in the area of understanding human obesity. Leibel has published hundreds of scientific papers on obesity, and has authored and co-authored 70 scientific papers on the topic of leptin specifically.

Having encountered obesity in children as a medical doctor in the 1970s, Leibel believed that biology played a stronger role than “will power” in human obesity and joined Jules Hirsch in theorizing about the psychobiology of obesity - a belief that body weight was the result of complex interactions between genes and the environment rather than a simple matter of free will. In 1978, based on his theory that genetics played a major role in determining body weight regulation in humans, Leibel left Harvard University to join Jules Hirsch at Rockefeller University with the goal of finding the factor that drove eating. In collaboration with Douglas Coleman, Leibel determined that a mutation of the ob gene resulted in mice that were unable to manufacture a working satiety-signaling protein and that a db mutation resulted in mice that had the protein, but lacked the ability to detect the signal.

Leibel and Hirsch began a series of scientific investigations aimed at laying the groundwork for determining the connection between genetics and obesity. Over the course of eight years, Leibel's work ranged from studies of glycerol to the development of a radioisotpic technique for analysis of free fatty acid re-esterification in human adipose tissue to the metabolic characterization of obesity. After concluding that the tools of molecular genetics were key to moving his research forward and finding the obesity gene, Leibel initiated a collaboration with then-junior Rockefeller University faculty member and molecular biologist Jeffrey Friedman in 1986, and began to assemble a team of researchers including Streamson C. Chua, Nathan Bahary, Don Siegel, Yiying Zhang, Ricardo Proenca and others. Leveraging his respected and senior status within the scientific community, Leibel obtained ongoing funding from the National Institutes of Health and other sources, allowing the team to develop and utilize new techniques in their research such as chromosome microdissection.