Collaborators

Myron Weisfeldt was the reason our conviction that biological sex was an essentially important determinant of human physiology took root in the first ever program for the study of gender- specific medicine. He urged us to find funding for our idea and embraced our efforts to engage Procter& Gamble in collaborating with the medical school in finding new interventions for the improvement of human health. This was a first-ever model: at that time, collaboration of a university system with a commercial venture was not a popular idea. It was his persuasion of the senior faculty and the then Dean Herbert Pardes that gave us the authority to form the Partnership for Women’s Health at Columbia. At the time we were not able to convince the university to broaden the title of the program to the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine, but we were soon able to change that with his advice and support. Effecting this partnership was not easy. The senior leadership of the university questioned whether or not any of us were going to receive specific personal financial support from P&G to establish this program; Doctor Weisfeldt was able to demonstrate that this was absolutely not the case; the funding was given exclusively to the medical school and used to support the joint program there. It was Doctor Weisfeldt’s departure from Columbia to chair the department of medicine at Johns Hopkins that prompted us to move our program to a private foundation, as the chairman of medicine at Columbia that succeeded Doctor Weisfeldt did not share in our enthusiasm for gender-specific medicine. Happily, our foundation survived the transition, in no small part due to Doctor Weisfeldt’s continued support of our work. He continues to encourage our work with programs at Johns Hopkins and effected Dr. Legato’s appointment as an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins in 2006. As Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins and Medical Consultant for Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, Doctor Weisfeldt provides advice on strategies and evaluation of intellectual property of Johns Hopkins faculty. Dr. Weisfeldt was Chairman of the Cardiology Advisory Board of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute from 1987 to 1990 and was the President of the American Heart Association in 1990. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Wendy Bennett is one of our two close collaborators at Johns Hopkins; she is the co-head of the Center for Women’s Health, Sex and Gender Research. We have been a major supporter of her efforts there to further her work in the prevention and management of obesity and type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease among women at high risk.. Her efforts at patient care are based both in the clinic and on effective outreach to the community She focusses in particular at developing and testing health-coaching behavioral interventions to promote healthy lifestyle and weight gain in pregnancy and postpartum care and has established a system of in early home visiting programs. We were able to give major support to a multiyear grant she supervised from the National Institutes of Health which created a Specialized Center of Research Excellence, concentrating on sex and age differences in immunity. Her center also used supplementary grants from us to support to young investigators helping to stem the havoc of the covid epidemic. Doctor Bennett enjoys joint appointments in the Departments of Medicine and Gynecology at Johns Hopkins, as well as at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Departments of Epidemiology and Population, Family and Reproductive Health.

Dr. Martin R. Post, founder of the New York Cardiology Associates, is an expert whose assistance we seek on a near-daily basis to help us sort out some of the most complex issues our patients face. He has a broad palate of philanthropic support which happily includes substantial gifts to our Foundation’s funding of our young investigators at institutions through the world. His support for justice and equality is realized through his work with the JPB Foundation, which addresses the daunting challenges of our time: voting rights, the defense of minority groups and innovative ways to combat authoritarianism, attesting to his strong interest in helping all humans to achieve a more successful and empowered existence. Doctor Post is a man of impeccable rectitude and modesty; we value his counsel and support.

One of the most effective partnerships our foundation has ever enjoyed was that with Craig Wynett, who was appointed by the then chairman of P&G, Mr. John Pepper, to make our program a reality. At the time, Mr. Wynett was the chief creative officer at P&G and had founded a new startup within the company, Corporate New Ventures, which commanded a 250-million-dollar budget to seek out in an effort to produce innovative new products. Fortunately, Mr. Wynett believed a partnership with a major university was an ideal way to fuse the talents of corporate expertise in manufacturing and marketing new commodities and the scientists whose ground-breaking discoveries would be ideal concepts for new products. Over a two-year period, he, Doctor Weisfeldt and Dr. Legato collaborated in creating a rich tapestry of ideas for the new venture. Our days were filled with laughter, excitement and unbounded enthusiasm for the program. He was an essential ingredient of our ultimate success and those early days, filled as they were with the humor and creativity of this unique individual remain one of our most important memories. Mr. Wynett’s development methods have been studied by Harvard researchers and replicated by R&D executives from a myriad of other multinationals. Mr. Wynett is the co-author with Mehmet Oz of You: The Owner’s Manual, which has sold over 3 million copies worldwide.

Dr. Donald W. Landry served as the Physician-in-Chief at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons from 2007 through 2023. He was the crucially important for us as the second chairman of medicine at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons who offered substantial and effective help to our work. When it was clear that we were setting up our Foundation as a private entity, we asked him if we could use the M. Irene Ferrer fund of almost one million dollars that we had raised in her honor for the support of our work. He was immediately helpful and negotiated an arrangement in which the income from that fund would be used to support the work of young investigators at Columbia. Those chosen were required to use the parameter of biological sex in planning their research protocols. In addition to his invaluable help as department chairman, he had a particularly engaging historical tie with us; at the time that Procter & Gamble came to see what we as Columbia research faculty could offer in terms of important projects, Doctor Landry, then a young investigator, presented his ground breaking work on cocaine antibodies, one of the standouts of that site visit. He has been a source of support and counsel to use that has kept us in close collaboration with the Columbia faculty. Dr. Landry was the founding director of the Division of Experimental Therapeutics and is currently the President of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.

Professor Sabra Klein is the second member of the talented and effective duo with whom we collaborate at Johns Hopkins. She is co-head with Wendy Bennett of the NIH SCORE grant that created the Center for Women’s Health, Sex and Gender Research at Johns Hopkins. She is a Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research considers how sex and gender impact the immune system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Klein investigated why men and women have different COVID-19 outcomes. Using an animal model, she showed how rodents maintain viral infections, and predicted how those viruses can be transmitted to humans. Dr. Klein is particularly interested in the differences between men and women’s immune systems, and the sex-specific responses to infection. She showed that that the X chromosome was encoded with several genes that control the immune response. She believes that estrogen alters the response of immune cells, encouraging it to start making proteins and start or stop an inflammatory response. Whilst this stronger immune response can clear viruses faster in women, it can also cause immunopathology.

Isobel and Marvin Slomowitz are a husband and wife team that used their enthusiasm for our program to help us produce our first gala at the Doubles Club 10 years ago, convinced in the importance of our mission and urging their friends to help support our cause. When we asked Isobel what to list as the most important component of her partnership with us, she answered: “25 years of instant and forever friendship.” They have been an unending source of counsel and financial contributions to help us develop a robust scholarship program for young investigators. Their interest in health care began with Mr. Slomowitz’s service in Korea, where his heroism in tending the wounded earned him a Bronze Star. The Slomowitz’s philanthropy is legion: they have donated an operating suite at the Schneider Children’s Hospital in Petah Tikvah and established a chair at the Hadassah Medical Center in Israel. They are President’s Circle members of the famed Weitzman Institute of Science. New York Presbyterian Hospital is a prime beneficiary of their support: they endowed the Isobel and Marvin Slomowtiz Pre-Operative Care Center there and helped finance the Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center.

Dr. Giuseppe Caracciolo is without question one of the most valuable colleagues our Foundation has ever had. He has been a sophisticated advisor and supporter of our work from its inception. As the Scientific Affairs & Operations Director at the Menarini Foundation in Italy, he helped us produce a series of world-class seminars devoted to some of the most important problems in medicine. He is an experienced and well-trained physician in addition to his remarkable administrative competence: he is a cardiologist with a rich history of working both in the clinical setting with patients and in the pharmaceutical industry. His work with a series of prestigious world-class institutions including the University of Messina, the Icahn School of Medicine, The Mayo Clinic, and UC Irvine, enriched his research expertise and gave him the responsibility to plan, supervise and bring to fruition valuable clinical trials. In his leadership role at the Menarini Foundation, he was an integral part of the team that conceptualized the Menarini Foundation’s new House of Science, a building in Fiesole dedicated to the hosting of distinguished scientists from around the world who explore current topics of worldwide interest in biomedicine. His latest gift to us is his guidance and collaboration with our recent symposium in Florence, “Building a Spacefaring Civilization: Advancing the Renaissance of Science, Medicine and Human Performance in Civilian Spaceflight.” The intellectual achievements of our own Foundation and the international biomedical community have been in a very real sense immeasurably enriched by his gifts of advice and support to all of us.

Dr. Marek Glezerman understood the power of gender-specific medicine from the earliest days of its conception as an idea; he was a friend and collaborator with Dr. Legato from the first international conference in Berlin in 2006 that assembled the small group advancing the new science. His wisdom and competence was a major factor in making gender specific medicine a solid and ever evolving new concept—a concept which now has proven to be valid even for single cell studies harvested from astronauts and appearing in the current issue of Nature, reporting important sex differences in the impact of space travel on humans. He not only is the Founding President of The Israel Society for Gender-and Sex-Conscious Medicine but was the moving force in welding together a group of international experts to form the International Society for Gender- Specific Medicine. His career is studded with a remarkable list of accomplishments: he is Professor Emeritus Chairman of Gender Medicine and chairman of the Ethics Committee at the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. He has also served as the director of the Research Center for Gender Medicine at the Rabin Medical Center. He is also a member of the Israel Ministry of Health’s National Council for Obstetrics and Gynecology, Genetics and Perinatology. He has written and/or edited five books and has published more than 330 scientific articles in professional journals.