George King

George Liang King (born 1950) is a Taiwanese-American physician-scientist and diabetologist affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School. King is a researcher on how diabetes affects the Asian American population; and on diabetes-related complications. He is the inaugural Thomas J. Beatson, Jr. Chair at Harvard Medical School, as well as Director of Research, Senior Vice President at the Joslin Diabetes Center, where he is also ex officio a board of trustees member.

Personal life and education King was born in 1950.

In 1972, King earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University, and later a Doctor of Medicine degree from Duke University School of Medicine. He completed a residency at the University of Washington before pursuing additional training at the National Institutes of Health.

Career King has been affiliated with Joslin and Harvard since 1981. He has published over 350 scientific papers, which have been cited nearly 100 thousand times. These articles mostly correspond to topics in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Diabetes Mellitus. His current research aims at finding protective biochemical factors acting to prevent complications in a large, special group of medalist type 1 diabetic patients who have remained relatively healthy even after 50 or more years suffering the disease. King also leads a national effort to improve care for diabetes in Asian Americans, who develop diabetes at low body weight. King is the founder of Joslin's Asian American Diabetes Initiative, which runs Asian Diabetes Clinic, a provider of exceptional patient care, and culture tailored education materials. In 2018, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the biological sciences section.

Research King’s research focuses on finding the causes of diabetic complications. He founded the Medalist Study to investigate new treatments for diabetic complications, and to understand the reasons for the high rate of diabetes in Asian Americans. His laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms that cause vascular complications caused by hyperglycemia and insulin resistance. He discovered that VEGF is an important causal factor in the severe form of diabetic eye disease. King´s laboratory has played a pioneering role in the characterization of endogenous protective factors originating in tissues which can neutralize the toxic effect of hyperglycemia and insulin resistance.

Awards

1986 - Elected Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Investigation 1988 - Lilly Clinical Scholar and Visiting Professor 1989-1990 - Cogan Award, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology 2010 - Harry Lee Memorial Lecture; Chinese American Medical Association 2011 - Ramon and Victoria Lim Medical Science Lectureship; University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa 2011 and 2012 - Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award; Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 2015 - Edwin Bierman Lecture Award, American Diabetes Association 2017 - Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International "Donald Silver Excellence in Research" 2018 - Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2019 - Antonio Champalimaud Vision Award, Champalimaud Foundation, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal 2022 - Thomas J. Beatson, Jr. Chair Professor of Diabetes at Harvard Medical Scho 2024 - Rongxiang Xu, MD Keynote Lecture, Diabetic Lower Extremity Symposium