Wright Joins NIDDK as Hematology Program Director
Daniel G. Wright, M.D., recently became program director for hematology research within the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), succeeding David Badman, Ph.D., who built the program to prominence over 3 decades. In this position, Dr. Wright will work alongside Terry Bishop, Ph.D., the NIDDK Hematology Genomics and Training Program director. He will also collaborate with the NIDDK intramural program as an associate investigator in the Molecular Medicine Branch.
Dr. Wright’s move to the NIDDK from Boston University Medical Center, where he was professor of medicine and pathology and chief of hematology-oncology, is a professional homecoming of sorts. After receiving his M.D. and immediate post-graduate training at Yale, Dr. Wright came to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a clinical associate at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the mid-1970s. He subsequently joined the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as a junior staff investigator. He left the NIH in 1980 to become chief of hematology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research for 12 years.
Dr. Wright says he looks forward to continuing the tradition of basic science as the core of the NIDDK Hematology Program established by Dr. Badman. He also looks forward to fostering translational research that will apply insights from basic science to clinical medicine.
Continuing a Legacy
“What has made this program so important and interesting is its history of promoting seminal basic research, particularly into hematopoietic stem cell biology, erythropoiesis, and iron metabolism,” said Dr. Wright. “I would like to see this legacy continue. I would also like to see the program expand in novel translational directions.”
Dr. Wright said he considers hematology research to be one of the original multidisciplinary sciences. Links between blood disorders—anemia in particular—and kidney and digestive diseases were recognized at the time the NIH was founded and led to the establishment of a hematology research program that was among the first sponsored by the NIH and that eventually became the NIDDK. Similarly, recognition of the relevance of blood disorders to understanding cancer, infection, and cardiovascular diseases led to the growth of an impressive array of hematology research programs throughout the NIH, particularly in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the NCI, and the NIAID.
NIDDK Launches Hematology, Endocrinology/Metabolic Diseases Information Services
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has launched two new information services designed to bring the public and health professionals resources on hematology and endocrine/metabolic diseases.
The two information services provide links to disease resources, basic statistics on related conditions, and information about clinical trials and other resources.
The Hematology Diseases Information Service can be reached via the Internet at hematologic.niddk.nih.gov or by phone at
1–888–828–0877. The Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases Information Service is online at endocrine.niddk.nih.gov and can be contacted by phone at 1–888–828–0904.
Dr. Wright is enthusiastic about the possibility of collaboration among the diverse hematology research programs at the NIH concerned with basic science and blood diseases.
“Overlapping interests in science are positive,” he recently noted. “A diversity of research that approaches similar questions from different points of view is something that promotes advances in understanding health and disease and of how to favor the one by preventing and treating the other.”
Dr. Wright has authored more than 130 basic and clinical research publications relating to blood cell biology and blood disorders, and he is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, as well as a member of the American Society of Hematology and American Society for Cell Biology.
NIH Publication No. 06–5743
July 2006
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