Biography | Education | Memberships | DBBS Affiliations | Honors
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Director, The Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology
- Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor
- Professor, Pathology & Immunology
- Professor, Developmental Biology
- Professor, Medicine
- Professor, Molecular Microbiology
Biography
Jeffrey I. Gordon received his Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College and his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Chicago. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and gastroenterology at Washington University School of Medicine and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Biochemistry at NIH’s National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Gordon has spent his entire academic career at WashU Medicine, first as a member of the Departments of Medicine and of Biological Chemistry, then as Head of the Department of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology. Since 2004, he has served as the founding Director of The Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology at Washington University, an interdepartmental team of investigators from multiple schools.
Dr. Gordon has had the privilege and pleasure of serving as the research mentor to more than 145 PhD and MD/PhD students and post-doctoral fellows since he established his lab.
His memberships include the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society.
He is a Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate (Physiology or Medicine; 2015) and holds 25 US patents.
Education
- AB: Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH
- MD: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Memberships
Dr. Gordon’s professional memberships include:
- National Academy of Sciences
- National Academy of Medicine
- American Philosophical Society
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Association of American Physicians
DBBS affiliations
- Molecular Microbiology & Microbial Pathogenesis
- Molecular Cell Biology
- Plant and Microbial Biosciences
- Computational and Systems Biology
Honors received
Dr. Gordon’s awards and recognition include:
- 2024 – Nierenberg Prize, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
- 2024 – Honorary doctorate, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
- 2024 – Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science, Northwestern University
- 2023 – Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research
- 2023 – Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, Princess of Asturias Foundation
- 2023 – Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research
- 2022 – David and Beatrix Hamburg Award for Advances in Biomedical Research and Clinical Medicine, National Academy of Medicine
- 2021 – Balzan Prize, Balzan Foundation
- 2018 – BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine
- 2018 – Copley Medal, Royal Society, London
- 2017 – Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, Columbia University
- 2017 – Massry Prize, Meira and Shaul G. Massry Foundation
- 2015 – Keio Medical Science Prize, Keio University
- 2014 – Dickson Prize in Medicine, University of Pittsburgh
- 2013 – Robert Koch Award, Koch Foundation
- 2013 – Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology, National Academy of Sciences
Research statement
Members of our diverse, highly interactive, collaborative, supportive, interdisciplinary lab family have developed and applied experimental and computational approaches to define mechanisms that underlie the assembly and expressed functions of human gut microbiomes plus their effects on the host. A major focus of the lab is studying the role of the gut microbiome in the pathogenesis of maternal and childhood undernutrition. This is the leading cause of death in children under 5-years-old worldwide, and a harbinger of long-lasting impairments in growth and development for those that survive.
The lab’s basic and translational studies involve: (i) comprehensive characterization of gut microbiome and host features in healthy and undernourished individuals residing in areas where the burden of undernutrition and enteropathy is great, (ii) incorporating the gut microbial communities of these populations into gnotobiotic animal models to characterize their effects on various facets of host metabolism and physiology (such as immune and CNS function) and (iii) identifying ‘targets’ in the microbiome whose therapeutic manipulation influence host signaling pathways involved in restoration of healthy growth and metabolism. Therapeutic candidates identified in these gnotobiotic models are subsequently tested in randomized controlled clinical trials involving the very population whose gut microbial communities are represented in the preclinical models. Once completed, these clinical trials are re-enacted in the gnotobiotic animal models using pre-intervention gut communities from trial participants; such ‘reverse translation’ experiments can yield important new insights about the mechanism of action of therapeutic candidates and guide development of more efficacious treatments.
This translational research pipeline has led to the discovery and development of microbiome-directed therapeutic foods (MDCFs) for treating childhood undernutrition. Initial clinical trials of these MDCFs have been and are being performed with long-standing collaborators at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). Follow-on studies of the generalizability of their effects will continue in additional populations living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. These and other facets of the lab’s work are providing evidence that healthy postnatal growth is causally linked to proper development of the gut microbiome in infants and children, with implications for creating new strategies for prevention of this debilitating condition.
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