Presenting Dr. Charles Stanley
Written by Julie Raskin
CHI is introducing a series of blog articles on the speakers who will be addressing families attending the Fourth Congenital Hyperinsulinism Family Conference March 17 and 18, 2012, in Philadelphia, PA. In our first article, we present Dr. Charles Stanley of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).
Dr. Charles Stanley is a powerhouse in the field of pediatric endocrinology with a specialization in congenital hyperinsulinism (HI). He has had a remarkable career as a professor, researcher, clinician and administrator. He has authored many papers and been at the forefront of congenital hyperinsulinism research for his entire career. After graduating from Harvard University as an undergraduate and the University of Virginia Medical School, Dr. Stanley moved on to CHOP for his post-doc training. He has been there ever since and is one of the reasons CHOP is such a leading institution and a world class center for treatment and research in the HI field. While Dr. Stanley has been at CHOP for his entire medical career, he has had the opportunity to collaborate with people from many institutions all over the world on HI research. He considers the collaborative nature of this work to be a key factor in the gains in knowledge and improvements in outcomes.
Dr. Stanley has had a longstanding interest in glucose metabolism beginning in his later teenage years. His work through the decades has consistently been groundbreaking. His mentor in the field was Lester Baker, another CHOP researcher and clinician who had been working on “idiopathic hypoglycemia, treating it with diazoxide.” Dr. Stanley “tumbled to the fact that these kids actually had hyperinsulinism.” Together with Dr. Lester Baker, Dr. Stanley came up with an excellent method for diagnosing HI and this was paired with a strategy for drug and surgical treatment. They also studied “other forms of hypoglycemia and stumbled onto new genetic disorders of fatty acid oxidation,” which, in turn, helped them to find the genetic basis of hyperinsulinism, just at a time technologies for genetic mutation analysis became available.
Charles Stanley had the great fortune to collaborate with Drs. “Paul Thornton , Ben Glaser and Alan Permutt on the discovery of SUR1 and Kir6.2 mutations as the first of the hyperinsulinism genes.” Dr. Stanley is very encouraged by the work that has taken place in the field over the last few decades and in recent years. Dr. Stanley is also very excited by new directions in treatment and research. He notes in particular Dr. “Diva DeLeon’s work on GLP1 antagonists as a potential alternative to surgery and the work at CHOP with surgeon, Dr. Scott Adzick and his use of PET scans for locating and curing focal HI.” In addition to the colleagues mentioned above, Dr. Stanley is very impressed by the work of Drs. Khalid Hussain, Pascale de Lonlay, Timo Otonkoski, and Lydia Aguilar-Bryan, in addition to many others.
Dr. Stanley has also been a wonderful mentor and supporter of Congenital Hyperinsulinism International (CHI). He has been instrumental in helping HI families develop our strong voice, advocating and supporting improved care for our children with HI. I have known Charles Stanley for 15 years. In addition to being a brilliant researcher and clinician, he is a delightful person. Kind and true are the first adjectives that come to mind to describe him. Our work together, Stanley notes is a good thing and “there is lots to do ahead.” He continues: “I’m gratified to have been able to lend a hand. One of our nurses, Linda Steinkrauss, used to show pictures of our kids with HI and say, ‘These are my 10 favorite reasons for coming to work each day’. I couldn’t agree more.”
