The franz center full#

He is someone we often sought advice from, drawing on his knowledge of the history of Penn, the field of metabolism and his general wisdom. On a personal note, as the current Chair of Biochemistry and Biophysics and the Director of IDOM, we are deeply appreciative of Franz’s mentorship. Berson Plenary Lecture IDF Medal (1988), the Elliott Proctor Joslin Medal 1992), the Banting Medal from the American Diabetes Association (1995), the Paul-Langerhans-Plakette award (1996), the Paul Lacy Medal (2011) and the Rolf Luft Award (2020). Matschinsky published over 300 papers over his career and received many awards, including the Solomon A. In recent years he continued to serve a valued advisory role for Doris Stoffers, Klaus Kaestner, and the IDOM Islet Biology Core.ĭr.

Additionally, together with Charles Stanley of CHOP and Mark Magnuson of Vanderbilt, Franz elucidated biochemical and genetic mechanisms of monogenic forms of diabetes and hypoglycemia. Most notably, with Penn colleagues Clyde Barker, Ali Naji and Nicolai Doliba, Franz pioneered physiologic chemical studies of isolated pancreatic islets from healthy and diabetic patients. Moreover, as a tremendously collaborative scientist, Franz worked extensively with others at Penn and around the world. Throughout his forty-plus years at Penn Franz continued to study glucokinase and glucose homeostasis, fascinated by the seemingly endless crosstalk and feedback between glucose sensing, insulin and other metabolic processes and - identifying many cellular, genetic and pharmacologic regulators of GCK. He shared his love of metabolism by teaching medical students for many years and remained an active faculty member in both the Department and in IDOM until his passing last week. Franz also served as Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics from 1984-1993. Matschinsky was recruited Penn in 1978 to serve as the Director of the Penn Diabetes center, a position he held for 20 years. Through this work, Franz made his seminal discovery of the enzyme glucokinase (GCK) as the primary glucose sensor in the pancreas, and started his quest to understand the role of GCK in insulin secretion and glucose homeostasis.ĭr.

While at Wash U, Franz adapted techniques of quantitative histochemistry to the study of glucose and energy metabolism in a wide variety of tissues including the retina, the cochlea and the islets of Langerhans, also known as pancreatic islets.

The franz center full#

He quickly impressed his colleagues at Wash U, and was appointed an Assistant Professor in 1965 and rapidly promoted to Full Professor only 6 years later.

Also, during this time, he met and married Elke Fritz, with whom he shared 57 years of happy life until her passing in late 2019.įranz moved to the States in 1963 to continue his postdoctoral training at the Washington University in St.

It was during this time that Franz decided to pursue an academic career. Franz remained in Germany through all his education receiving a BS in Basic Medical Science from Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg, where he was introduced to preclinical medical science and then moving to the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich where he received his MD in 1958, and continued on to carry out postdoctoral research in the field of ketogenesis with Professor Otto Wieland. Matschinsky was born in Breslau, Germany in 1931, a region that is now Poland, and moved with his family to the NordRein-Westphalia area of Germany after World War II. We have lost a beloved colleague, mentor and friend, and a passionate scientist who had tremendous impact over his almost 45 years at Penn through his leadership in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and the Institute of Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism (IDOM).ĭr. It is with much sadness that we write to inform the Penn community of the passing of Dr.