The 43rd Annual Kalamazoo Community Medical and Health Sciences Research Day will be held in April at the W.E. Upjohn M.D. Campus.
The event will take place on Thursday, April 3, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and the theme for this year's Research Day is “Advancing Therapies, Expanding Access: Pharmaceutical Advances in a New Era.” Research Day will showcase breakthroughs in basic and translational sciences, clinical, public health, medical education, social and behavioral sciences, and quality improvement.
“Research Day is an opportunity to celebrate innovation and collaboration in medical science, and this year’s theme underscores the transformative impact of pharmaceutical advancements on patient care,” said Nancy Bjorklund, EdD, MPA, assistant dean for Global and Continuing Education, and Josh Mastenbrook, MD, associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine. “We are especially honored to welcome Dr. Roger Cone as our keynote speaker. His pioneering work in metabolic regulation and obesity treatment exemplifies the power of research to drive meaningful change. We look forward to a day of insightful discussions and groundbreaking discoveries that will shape the future of medicine.”
The event will consist of several oral presentations throughout the day featuring faculty from WMed and Western Michigan University, as well as resident physicians, postdoctoral fellows, research scientists, and students from the medical school. Lunch will be served and Research Day will conclude with an awards ceremony in the William D. Johnston and Ronda E. Stryker Auditorium.
CE credit for the event is provided by WMed. For more information about CE credit, please visit https://bit.ly/4gybYv9.
The keynote speaker for Research Day 2025 is Roger D. Cone, PhD, who serves as the Mary Sue Coleman Director of the Life Sciences Institute and vice provost and director of the Biosciences Initiative at the University of Michigan. Dr. Cone, who also serves as a professor of Molecular and Integrative Physiology and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, 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.
Dr. 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.
Before he joined the University of Michigan in 2016, Dr. Cone was professor and chairman of the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt University from 2008 to 2016, and a faculty member of the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health Sciences University from 1990 to 2008. Dr. Cone was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 and the National Academy of Medicine in 2016 for his work, and received numerous awards, including the Berson Award, Berthold Memorial Award, Ipsen Prize, and the Rolf Luft Prize.
For more information about Research Day, please visit wmed.edu/researchday. Questions about this year’s activities can be submitted to the WMed Office of Research at researchday@wmed.edu.