José F. Caro (born Granada, Spain, 1948) is an American physician, scientist, and educator most notable for his research in obesity and diabetes. The Institute for Scientific Information listed him the third most cited investigator in the world in the field of obesity research during the 1991-2000 period for his work on Leptin. Caro is an artist and a signature member of the Pastel Society of America.
Education
Caro received his M.D. degree in 1973 from the University of the Republic, Uruguay and Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. He completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in 1977, becoming certified in internal medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine. Caro completed his fellowship training in Endocrinology and Metabolism in 1981 at the Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, becoming certified in Endocrinology and Metabolism by the American Board of Internal Medicine. These formative years were funded by training grants from the American Diabetes Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which also sustained his involvement in diabetes research. His early research output paved the way for him to become an independent investigator soon thereafter by receiving in 1981 the Wayne Newton Research Award from the American Diabetes Association and in 1982 the New Investigator Research Award from the National Institutes of Health.
Medical career
East Carolina University
Caro was the founding Director of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism of The Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University (ECU) (1982-1991). He established the ECU Diabetes Center, funded by the ECU Diabetes Program Project Grant (P01-DK 36296) from the National Institutes of Health, a multidisciplinary collaborative endeavor by scientists with specialties in medicine, biochemistry, and surgery. Among their contribution to the understanding of Insulin resistance in Type 2 Diabetes stands out the discovery of alterations in the insulin receptor kinase in the human liver. Also, in collaboration with Walter Pories, that gastric bypass surgery induced a long lasting remission of the disease in about 80% of obese people with diabetes. Moreover, in people with pre-diabetes the gastric bypass surgery prevents the development of diabetes by about 40 fold. At the time of such work the gastric bypass surgery was an experimental procedure, which is now well accepted in standard clinical practice. For the sum of this work Caro was elected a member of The American Society for Clinical Investigation (Young Turk).
Thomas Jefferson University
In 1991 Caro was recruited by his US alma mater, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, to become the Magee Professor of Medicine and the 16th Chairman of the Department. During his 5-year tenure the Department´s National Institute of Health research funding nearly tripled, the residency program in medicine became the largest in Pennsylvania, and the outpatient program doubled. During this time, Caro´s research laboratory made other important breakthroughs. Caro’s group was the first to publish the complete cDNA of human leptin gene (or Ob gene), and also described the first radioimmunoassay to measure leptin in blood.
Subsequently, he was elected to the Association of American Physicians (Old Turk), and appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to the Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health (2000-2004). His research on leptin published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation in 1995 was the first to explore leptin following the discovery of the hormone by Friedman’s laboratory in 1994. Caro’s laboratory demonstrated that human obesity is not characterized by leptin deficiency but by leptin resistance and helped usher in "leptinomania" in the study of obesity. At Jefferson, Caro organized a multidisciplinary team funded by NIH to study diabetes prevention. With this effort Caro became one of the 25 principal investigators of the diabetes prevention program, a landmark -nationwide clinical trial- to show that lifestyle changes or metformin can effectively prevent type 2 diabetes.