(l-r) Drs. Rakesh Patel, Mark Gladwin and Cristina Magi-GalluzziThe UAB Department of Pathology celebrated the 30th year of its Paulette Shirey Pritchett Endowed Lecture in Pathology on September 25 with an outstanding lecture by Mark T. Gladwin, M.D., Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Maryland, and the John Z. Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean. Gladwin delivered the talk, titled, “Translating Redox Biology to Medicine: Lessons Learned, Taking Risks, and Going NO Where.”
Dr. Gladwin received his medical degree from the University of Miami in 1991. He completed residency at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, followed by a Critical Care fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle.
He returned for post-doctoral research fellowships at the NIH in cell and molecular biology and in hemoglobin biochemistry. He later served as the Chief of the Pulmonary and Vascular Medicine Branch within the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH.
In 2008, Gladwin was recruited to the University of Pittsburgh to serve as Chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine and as the inaugural Director of the Vascular Medicine Institute. In 2013, he was also named Scientific Director of the Heart and Vascular Institute, and in 2015 became Chair of the Department of Medicine.
Gladwin was appointed as the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Maryland in 2022.
Gladwin has received numerous academic awards including the US Public Health Service Achievement Award, the NIH Director’s Award for Mentoring, the NIH Clinical Center Director’s Award for Science, the NIH Merit Award, the Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishments from the American Thoracic Society, and the ATS Assembly on Pulmonary Circulation Leadership Award. He was named an American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist.
Gladwin has published more than 450 manuscripts, which have had significant impacts on the fields of vascular and nitrate biology. He maintains an active research group and is currently PI of three R01 grants and a clinical trial. Most recently, his laboratory has pioneered the use of recombinant neuroglobin and heme-based molecules as antidotes for CO poisoning, and this work resulted in the formation of a company, Globin Solutions.
The lecture is named for Paulette Shirey Pritchett, who was appointed an assistant professor at UAB in 1975 and a surgical pathologist at UAB and later at Cooper Green Hospital. Pritchett was a highly respected young member of the UAB Department of Pathology when she unexpectedly passed away on August 2, 1984. Dr. Robert Pritchett, her husband and a practicing dermatologist, provided financial support to the university in her name to establish this lectureship.