Renowned Physician-Scientist Wayne Grody, MD, Ph.D., Named President of the American College of Medical Genetics

BETHESDA, Md., March 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Wayne W. Grody, MD, Ph.D., of Los Angeles, Calif. is the new president of The American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG), the national professional organization for medical genetics professionals.

Dr. Grody takes over from Bruce R. Korf, MD, Ph.D., FACMG, of Birmingham, AL, who completed his two-year term at the 2011 Annual Clinical Genetics Meeting in Vancouver, BC, Canada in March.

"I have many different mixed emotions about taking over as president," Grody said. "It's made me tremendously proud, also humbled, also nervous. I think the ACMG is so important. It may be the most important of all the Colleges in organized medicine at this moment in history. To be the one at the helm during these critical years is daunting and exciting."

Dr. Grody is a Professor in the Departments of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Pediatrics, and Human Genetics at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is the director of the Diagnostic Molecular Pathology Laboratory within the UCLA Medical Center, one of the first such facilities in the country to offer DNA-based tests for diagnosis of a wide variety of genetic, infectious, and neoplastic diseases, as well as bone marrow engraftment, patient specimen identification and paternity testing by DNA fingerprinting.  

He is also an attending physician in the Department of Pediatrics, specializing in the care of patients with or at risk for genetic disorders.  In addition, he is heavily involved in basic molecular genetics research involving regulation of gene expression of arginase and related enzymes in hereditary arginase deficiency and various cancers, population molecular genetic screening, and construction of artificial human mutation samples.

He has been one of the primary developers of quality assurance and ethical guidelines for DNA-based genetic testing for a number of governmental and professional agencies including the FDA, AMA, CAP, ACMG, ASHG, AMP, CDC, and the NIH-DOE Human Genome Project (ELSI program).  He served as a member of the NIH-DOE Task Force on Genetic Testing, and was Working Group chair for development of ACMG's national guidelines for cystic fibrosis and factor V-Leiden mutation screening. Most recently, he was appointed chair of an Advisory Committee on Genomic Medicine for the entire VA healthcare system.

As a sidelight, Dr. Grody has been active in the film and television industries for many years, first as film critic for MD Magazine, a national leisure journal for physicians, then as technical advisor and sometime writer for a number of feature films, TV movies, and television series including Life Goes On, Chicago Hope, CSI, Medium, Heroes, and both Nutty Professor movies.

He did his undergraduate work at Johns Hopkins University, received his M.D. and Ph.D. at Baylor College of Medicine, and completed residency and fellowship training at UCLA.  He is double board-certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics (Clinical Genetics, Molecular Genetics, and Biochemical Genetics) and the American Board of Pathology (Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, Molecular Genetic Pathology).

"As advances in medical genetics are being made through research and discovery, the ACMG (www.acmg.net) and its members are working diligently to overcome the challenging regulatory and ethical issues raised by medical genetics, in particular molecular pathology," said Michael S. Watson, Ph.D., FACMG, executive director of the ACMG. "Dr. Grody is a highly capable leader and the right person to guide the ACMG though this very critical and exciting time in medical genetics."

SOURCE American College of Medical Genetics