Barbara Kahn, MD

George R. Minot Endowed Chair and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; Vice-Chair for Research Strategy in the Department of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Dr. Barbara Kahn earned a master’s degree in Health Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley and received her MD from Stanford University. She completed a general medicine fellowship at the University of California, Davis, followed by an endocrinology fellowship and research training at the National Institutes of Health, where she began exploring the molecular mechanisms underlying metabolic disease. This combination of clinical training and rigorous scientific research shaped her career-long focus on diabetes, obesity and metabolic regulation.

Dr. Kahn is widely lauded for her pioneering research elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying Type 2 Diabetes and the cellular and physiologic processes linking obesity with diabetes. Her research unveiled the now well-accepted fact that adipose tissue is an endocrine organ. She identified novel pathways by which fat cells regulate insulin sensitivity and the risk for Type 2 Diabetes. Her discovery that a specific protein secreted by fat cells causes insulin resistance stimulated worldwide clinical studies demonstrating that this protein is an early biomarker for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In collaboration with a chemical biology colleague, Dr. Kahn’s lab also discovered an exciting new class of signaling lipids with anti-diabetic and anti-inflammatory effects. These lipids are tightly linked to insulin sensitivity in humans and dramatically reduce autoimmune Type 1 diabetes in preclinical models. This discovery could lead to new prevention and treatment approaches for diabetes and immune-mediated diseases.

For her transformative contributions, Dr. Kahn has received some of the most prestigious honors in the field of diabetes research. Among them are the Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement, the highest award bestowed by the American Diabetes Association and the Excellence in Science Award from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which encompasses all areas of biological and biomedical research. She has also been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recognizing her profound impact on metabolic science and human health.