Derek LeRoith MD, PhD

LeRoith was born in South Africa where he earned both his MD and Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town. He trained in Internal Medicine and in 1974, he became a fellow of the College of Physicians of South Africa, and, in 1975, he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom. His post-doctoral training included an endocrine research fellowship at the University of Cape Town, and a residency in medicine and geriatrics at Middlesex Hospital in London.

In Israel, LeRoith held a lectureship in medicine and endocrinology at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In 1979, he joined the United States' National Institutes of Health and eventually became the Chief of its Diabetes Branch of the Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

He was the Chief of Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease and Director of the Metabolism Institute of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City until he joined, in 2010 Rambam Health Care Center and the Faculty of Medicine of the Technion to become the Director of the Diabetes and Metabolism Clinical Research Center of Excellence at the Clinical Research Institute at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, Israel.

LeRoith’s research both basic and clinical, has focused on obesity, Type 2 diabetes and the Insulin-like growth factor system in health and disease. He was the first to demonstrate the link between insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and cancer. More recently he has focused on the relationship between Obesity, Type 2 diabetes and Cancer

He is the author of more than 600 publications and an editor of more than 20 textbooks on endocrinology. He is an Associate Editor for Diabetes Care, Frontiers in Endocrinology, Clinic of North America for Endocrinology and Metabolism, and co-editor of GH and IGF Research Journal. In 2014 he became the Editor in Chief of Endocrine Practice.