Overview
The 43rd Annual Kalamazoo Community Medical and Health Sciences Research Day was held on April 3, 2025, at the W.E. Upjohn M.D. Campus in downtown Kalamazoo.
The theme for Research Day 2025 was:
“Innovating Therapies, Expanding Access: Pharmaceutical Advances in a New Era’’
The program focused on projects that involve breakthroughs in basic and translational sciences, clinical, public health, medical education, social and behavioral sciences, and quality improvement.
Research Day Resources
All potential Research Day participants also have access to additional resources for creating scientific abstracts via the WMed Library. Please contact the Office of Research at researchday@wmed.edu with any questions.
Keynote Speaker
Roger D. Cone, PhD
"Understanding How the Brain Regulates Body Weight"
Thursday, April 3, 2025 | 11:00 a.m.-Noon
Roger Cone joined the University of Michigan in 2016 as the Director of the Life Sciences Institute, and was appointed Vice Provost for the Biosciences Initiative in 2017. Prior to Michigan, Cone was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt University from 2008-2016, and a faculty member of the Vollum Institute, Oregon Health Sciences University from 1990 - 2008. Cone is credited with the discovery of multiple fundamental biological roles for the melanocortin system in energy homeostasis. These findings resulted from studies cloning and characterizing the five receptors for the melanocortin peptides, and analyzing the pharmacological and physiological functions of these receptors. Cone’s group provided the genetic and pharmacological validation of the melanocortin-4 and melanocortin-3 receptors as critical regulators of energy homeostasis, leading to the discovery of mutations in the MC4R as the leading cause of syndromic obesity, and development of the first drug for syndromic obesity, the MC4R agonist Imcivree, approved by the FDA in 2020. Cone has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2010), and the National Academy of Medicine (2016) for his work, and received numerous awards, including the Berson Award, Berthold Memorial Award, Ipsen Prize, and the Rolf Luft Prize.
CE credit provided by Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. More information regarding Continuing Education can be found via the CE Portal.