This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Roger Unger earns Luft Award for endocrinology contributions
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Roger Unger, MD, professor of internal medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, received the 2014 Rolf Luft Award for his outstanding contributions to endocrinology and diabetes research.
The prestigious international honor from the Karolinska Institutet medical university in Sweden, awarded to only one scientist each year, was bestowed upon Unger for his identification of glucagon as a pancreatic hormone that boosts blood sugar levels — the opposite effect of insulin.
Unger “was not only at the forefront of the identification of glucagon as a key hormone that balances insulin regulation of blood sugar, but almost singlehandedly rekindled the current widespread interest in the physiology of glucagon by establishing the hormone as a major drug target,” Daniel K. Podolsky, MD, president of UT Southwestern, said in a press release.
A faculty member at UT Southwestern since 1956, Unger developed a test to measure concentrations of glucagon and established that glucagon was a true pancreatic hormone released in opposing partnership with insulin to maintain normal blood glucose levels in 1959, while working at the Dallas VA hospital.
More recent investigations by Unger, who holds the Touchstone/West Distinguished Chair in Diabetes research, show blood glucose elevations cannot occur without abnormally high levels of glucagon, meaning glucagon suppression restores glucose levels to normal.
Unger’s research “revealed that diabetes is a bihormonal disease in which insufficiency of insulin is always associated with an excess of glucagon, which accounts for the hepatic overproduction of glucose and ketones in diabetes,” according to officials at Karolinska Institutet, home to the Nobel Assembly.
“Rolf Luft was a good friend and, in addition, a hero to me,” Unger said. “To receive this honor in his memory is a wonderful reward.”