Position description for NIDDK Directorship.
Application deadline: July 31, 2006
By Jane DeMouy
If ever a career reflected all the potential in the life of an NIH scientist, it was Dr. Allen M. Spiegel's. During 33 years of service, first as a fellow and clinical associate and finally as director of NIDDK, he never ceased being fascinated with the institution and its people, nor they with him.
"Aside from my family, NIH has been the most important thing in my life," Spiegel says. "I've had fantastic colleagues at every level, and I leave with mixed emotions, knowing I'll miss close friends and colleagues at NIH." He left in March to become dean-designate of Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York, where he will pursue his interests in fostering translational research and in medical education.
"And the Oscar goes to . . ." Former NIDDK director Dr. Allen Spiegel's colleagues voted him the best man in a leading role at a farewell party recently. NIH director Dr. Elias Zerhouni tapped Spiegel for critical trans-NIH initiatives during his tenure as NIDDK director, and he will be sorely missed, according to the NIH head. "Allen Spiegel does whatever he does with grace, insight and an analytical mind. He has the highest degree of intellectual rigor and integrity of anyone I've met," Zerhouni told the crowd of colleagues gathered for Spiegel's recent farewell reception.
A replay of the events and mentors of Spiegel's scientific life reveals circles overlapping circles. When he assumes the deanship at Einstein, he will be completing a circle begun in 1962, when, as a junior at Yeshiva University High School for Boys, he fell in love with research during an Einstein summer program funded by the National Science Foundation. A second circle of influence began when, as a student at Columbia, Spiegel was mentored at NYU's medical school by researcher Mark Bitensky, who had just come to New York from an NIH lab.
"I was completely hooked on biochemical studies by then," Spiegel remembers. While a Harvard medical student, he published his first paper in 1969 in Endocrinology, on the efficacy of fragments of the hormone glucagon in stimulating formation of the second messenger cyclic AMP. The journal's associate editor then was Dr. Gerald Aurbach, an NIH scientist known for his seminal work on the role of cyclic AMP in the mechanism of action of parathyroid hormone (PTH).
After finishing his internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Spiegel interviewed for 2 days at NIH. Aurbach, "one of NIH's luminaries," says Spiegel, was a physician-investigator steeped in basic science who never lost sight of research's relationship to clinical medicine. Aurbach's Metabolic Diseases Branch (MDB) seemed a "perfect match" to Spiegel, and the basic research-clinical medicine alliance became a hallmark of Spiegel's career.
By day, he saw patients suffering from excess or deficient hormones on 8 West in the Clinical Center. By night, he worked with cyclic AMP assays in the MDB. "It was extraordinary to be a fellow at NIH in those days," Spiegel recalls. "You were working with giants - it's not a cliché at all - Gerry Aurbach, Phil Gorden, Marty Rodbell, Mort Lipsett, Jesse Roth."
"Allen was a total pleasure, so quick and bright. It was a mutual education to work with him," says Gorden, who preceded Spiegel as director of NIDDK. Spiegel came to NIH intending to leave in 2 years. "He was a super talented clinical associate," adds Gorden. "Fortunately, he decided to stay."
Spiegel's investigative career showed no less talent. He followed Aurbach's lead in parathyroid hormone studies and work done by Nobelist Martin Rodbell, who identified G proteins at the cell membrane level. G proteins are key molecules controlling transmission of information from outside to inside a cell. Increases or decreases in this signaling cause hormone overproduction or resistance.
Spiegel quickly became a leader in defining subtypes of G proteins and their role in pediatric diseases, says NIDDK colleague Bill Simonds. His first memory of Spiegel was seeing him poring over a tray of Western blots in Bldg. 36. Simonds notes that Spiegel cloned human Gs-alpha cDNA while collaborating with Nobelist Marshall Nirenberg. Fascinating stuff, but for Spiegel, bench discoveries always led to the bedside. "He had a real gift for bringing together clinical and basic science," says Simonds.
"Allen was among the first to use biochemical assays to look at red blood cell membranes from patients," says Lee Weinstein, whom Spiegel - then chief of the section on molecular pathophysiology - recruited in 1986. "In an incredibly lucid manner, he explained the whole field of G proteins in about 20 minutes," says Weinstein, who promptly signed on.
Spiegel's NIH career began in the NIDDK intramural program in 1973. He eventually became NIDDK director. | As his work in cell signaling advanced, so did his role in NIDDK's intramural program. He was appointed chief when the molecular pathophysiology section expanded to a branch in 1988. In 1990, Spiegel became scientific director of NIDDK. Colleagues found him a good leader not only because of his wide knowledge of science - "he has a gigantic memory," says longtime colleague Steve Marx - but also because of his ability to teach others what he had absorbed. The year 1991 marked a highlight of his career, the publication of a landmark paper on McCune-Albright syndrome in the New England Journal of Medicine. |
Children with the disease suffered from over-secretion of multiple hormones that brought about precocious puberty as well as disordered thyroid, adrenal and growth hormones. Spiegel and colleagues discovered that a malfunctioning G protein was causing the overproduction.
Spiegel's ability to deliver flawless lectures on complex scientific topics at the drop of a hat prompted Simonds to say that his friend seemed to talk in "pre-formed paragraphs that would come tumbling out." Marx, who collaborated with Spiegel on 160 papers, says that during the pursuit of the MEN1 gene, he was famous for giving the team "unscheduled 40-minute lectures synthesizing some new and complex related topic in the literature." These events led co-investigator Francis Collins to assert that those who know Allen only as an administrator have probably not had "the full Spiegel experience."
His penchant for encyclopedic knowledge and the ability to apply it creatively probably guaranteed that administrative duties would not diminish Spiegel's role as scientific investigator. "Allen is a multi-dimensional person," says Gorden. "He very quickly gained the respect of NIDDK intramural scientists and others at NIH." Colleagues found him an accessible leader who had not only intellect but also a sense of fairness and honesty they appreciated.
In addition to functioning as scientific director, Spiegel remained chief of the Metabolic Diseases Branch from 1993, and helped create a trans-NIH collaboration that identified the tumor suppressor gene for multiple endocrine neoplasia, type 1 (MEN1). "He played a central role in mobilizing clinical researchers to gather tumors and patient DNA to go after the gene," says Simonds. "He was like a general, marshaling forces." Spiegel recalls this success as "very satisfying," perhaps on more than one count. Marx says Spiegel saw MEN1 as a paradigm for excess secretion of PTH, harkening back to Aurbach's protocols. It was icing on the cake that the NIH team beat out a European consortium to find the gene.
In 1999, Spiegel scored another kind of coup when he recruited Allen Kirk and Dave Harlan to study islet and kidney transplantation in NIDDK's new Transplantation and Autoimmunity Branch. "I learned that one could accomplish as much or more by encouraging others as by being solely focused in the lab," he remembers.
Later that year, NIH director Dr. Harold Varmus appointed Spiegel director of NIDDK, and his outlook shifted to the beta cell, and broadened to include NIDDK's many constituencies, from children with type 1 diabetes to the country's lawmakers. "It's very poignant," he says, "to field questions about diabetes from children as young as two and half. You see the optimism and realize we need to go further." At the other end, he notes, is the chance to explain the importance of scientific research and its power to members of Congress, which many colleagues feel he has done brilliantly. "He's among the very best," says Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, "not only on the scientific level, but in management. He has real vision, and it transcended NIDDK."
Zerhouni apparently thought so, too. With obesity spiraling out of control in the U.S., he tapped Spiegel to co-chair the NIH task force on obesity in 2003. Spiegel, with NHLBI director Dr. Claude Lenfant, developed a strategic plan for NIH obesity research in a little over a year. Zerhouni further gave Spiegel a key role in helping develop one of the NIH Roadmap initiatives, and relied on his expertise as a member of the NIH stem cell task force.
Now Spiegel's career circles back to Einstein and New York. "It's an extraordinary opportunity to invigorate the medical school and its programs, and Einstein's community, the Bronx, represents the whole spectrum of disease and health," he adds.
Spiegel believes that 21st century research requires an interdisciplinary approach including the computational, the quantitative and rigorous basic science with an understanding of biological systems. "Translation of basic science to systems knowledge must be applied to human health, for individual patients, but also in populations. There's a critical role for the NIH and other groups in this."
Spiegel served NIDDK as director for the past 6 years. He becomes dean of Albert Einstein College of Medicine on June 1.
