Endocrine Abstracts

Volume 11

Clinical Endocrinology Trust Visiting Professor Lecture

WF Crowley, Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States. Abstract

Dr William F Crowley Jr, is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Harvard Medical School’s Center Reproductive Endocrine Sciences Center and Director of Clinical Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr Crowley and his colleagues pioneered the use of GnRH analogues in the treatment of children with central precocious puberty, a therapy now used worldwide for children with this disorder. This was also the key proof of principle for GnRH_a-induced therapeutic desensitization now used widely in prostate cancer, endometriosis, and PCOD. He and his colleagues developed the use of pulsatile GnRH to induce ovulation in infertile women and also sexual maturation and fertility in men with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism and have used this model to define neuroendocrine physiology in the human. Most recently, his group has identified several new genes that underlie the neuroendocrine control of reproduction in the human using genetic and molecular approaches.

Dr Crowley has received the Annual General Clinical Research Centers Award for Excellence in Clinical Research, the Endocrine Society’s Award for Clinical Investigation, and the Fred Conrad Koch Award in 2005, the Endocrine Society’s highest award. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Physicians in Ireland and was awarded the Mentor of the Year Award from Women in Endocrinology in 2000. He served as the President of the Endocrine Society from 2001–2002.