Gerald D. Aurbach Award for Outstanding Translational Research
Eva L. Feldman, MD, PhD
Dr. Eva Feldman, MD, PhD, is an exceptional clinician-scientist who has devoted her career towards understanding diabetic neuropathy (DN), improving treatment options for her patients, and educating healthcare professionals on DN diagnosis and treatment.
With over 25 years of continuous NIH funding, her reputation is internationally recognized and she is an opinion leader in neurology. As a young neurologist, she developed a simple screening tool to diagnose DN, the Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument (MNSI). The initial paper describing this tool has been cited over 430 times, and the MNSI is now used worldwide and she oversees its use in multiple clinical trials (e.g. SEARCH, CACTI).
In the laboratory, her pioneering studies on neuropathy pathogenesis in metabolic diseases using cell-based models, novel mouse models, and human subjects has identified dyslipidemia during diabetes as a key driver of nervous system damage, leading to new clinical guidelines on patient care, and she serves as the principal investigator on grants aimed at completing comprehensive transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic phenotyping of DN subjects to understand and drive the development of novel therapies.
Her work is reflected in over 350 manuscripts, 69 book chapters, and four books, and her numerous accolades include membership in the National Academy of Medicine and in 2016, Dr. Feldman received the National Physician of the Year for Clinical Excellence award from Castle Connolly in New York. She also directs the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute at the University of Michigan, is a past president of the American Neurological Association, and has mentored nine graduate students and over 100 research and clinical fellows throughout her career.
In summary, Dr. Feldman’s exceptional clinical knowledge of DN, coupled with her passion for understanding its clinical course, identifying and treating affected patients, and educating colleagues on DN has transformed the DN landscape. She is an excellent example of the caliber of individual this award represents and is truly deserving of this award.