Ronadip Banerjee, MD, PhD, named Endocrinology chief

For Ronadip Banerjee, MD, PhD — the new Division of Endocrinology chief and associate professor of medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson — moving here from Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is a reunion twice over.

This is where he was born, where his parents retired and where his mother — a former reporter for the Arizona Daily Star — now lives.

“My parents met at the U of A in the late ’60s, when my mother was an undergraduate and my father a postdoc in chemistry. My father was from India, and my mother grew up in Ohio and New Mexico. They met at an international students dance at the university. The rest is history!” he said. “We moved away when I was 5, and I grew up in Michigan; however, we maintained ties to Tucson.”

His parents moved back to Tucson when his father retired as the Detroit VA Hospital’s chemistry section chief in 2003. A few years after his father’s death in 2011, his mother came to live with Dr. Banerjee’s family. She recently returned to Tucson.

That Tucson connection kept Dr. Banerjee visiting the Old Pueblo — as Tucson is known — and made his decision to join the U of A as Endocrinology division chief an easy one, he said.

A vital addition to academic team

DOM Chair James K. Liao, MD, a professor in the Division of Cardiology and renowned researcher in his own right, said he’s thrilled about Dr. Banerjee’s arrival in January.

“His leadership will be vital as we continue to grow our clinical and academic footprint in endocrinologic and metabolic diseases in southern Arizona. I look forward to working with him in developing new collaborative programs within and beyond the Department of Medicine,” Dr. Liao said.

Dr. Banerjee has been in Baltimore since 2021, joining Johns Hopkins’ faculty in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. He launched his faculty career at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and, before that, was an instructor at Stanford University. That’s where he earned his bachelor’s degree in biological sciences (1997) and got his start in research in the lab of Paul Berg, PhD, a Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner for his work on nucleic acids and recombinant DNA that opened the door to genetic engineering.

Dr. Banerjee’s doctorate in cellular and molecular biology (2003) and medical degree (2005) came from the University of Pennsylvania, where his mentor was Mitch Lazar, MD, PhD, known for his discovery of the hormone resistin and contributions to transcriptional regulation of metabolism. Then, he returned to Stanford to complete his internal medicine residency (2005-07) and endocrinology fellowship (2008-11) training, working later with Seung Kim, MD, PhD, whose lab studies gene, signal and cell interactions governing developmental biology of pancreatic islets.

Dr. Banerjee’s lab research also focuses on pancreatic islets, including insulin-producing beta cells and how they adapt to physiologic stressors such as pregnancy and dietary adaptation. Current projects are on the role prolactin receptor and its signaling pathway play in regulating the maternal islet response to pregnancy and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). In addition to risks during pregnancy, GDM can also predispose a mother or child to future risk of Type 2 diabetes. His latest paper on that is in the journal Molecular & Cellular Endocrinology’s September issue.

Envisioning new care approaches

At the U of A Division of Endocrinology, Dr. Banerjee is excited about the opportunities.

“I was deeply impressed by Dr. Jim Liao, who’s a great physician-scientist and clearly committed to growing and developing the department,” he said. “I just had a vibe, a sense of energy and growth I think is really rare, particularly as many places are downsizing or retrenching in challenging times.”

Instead, the Endocrinology division has added five faculty members in the last six months, including Dr. Banerjee. With that infusion comes opportunities for redirection and growth.

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“One of my goals is to shift the Division’s focus toward what I would call specialty and consultative endocrinology care and grow the division with the aim to serve the greater Tucson community as a regional and statewide referral center for complex endocrinology cases,” Dr. Banerjee said. “This is a really important aspect of our mission.”

He would like to work closely with primary care to ensure appropriate patients are seen promptly by the Division of Endocrinology. Those would include “complicated cases like Type 1 diabetics on insulin pumps, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndromes, thyroid cancers, hyperparathyroidism, and other diseases that we can treat or expedite care with our partners in surgery and other disciplines to offer curative treatments.”

Collaboration for the future

Dr. Banerjee is excited to work with the Department of Surgery’s Barbra Miller, MD, an endocrine surgeon who started at the college in September in the Division of Surgical Oncology, as well as Surgery’s Klearchos Papas, PhD, whose work on an implantable bioartificial pancreas shows promise as a treatment for adults and children with Type 1 diabetes.

The division is in a good position on training, he agreed, due to a recent National Institutes of Health T32 grant won by past Endocrinology division chief Lawrence J. Mandarino, PhD — the first in the state dedicated to training next-generation researchers on endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, according to Dr. Mandarino. That funding will allow the college and Center for Disparities in Diabetes, Obesity & Metabolism that Dr. Mandarino still heads to attract only the best student, graduate student and fellowship candidates to the U of A.

Drs. Liao and Banerjee offered their thanks to Dr. Mandarino and Merri Pendergrass, MD, PhD, who came to the college in 2012 and served as the division’s clinical chief since Dr. Mandarino’s arrival in 2016. Prior to that, she was clinical diabetes director at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and associate professor at Harvard Medical School and later on faculty at Dallas’ University of Texas Southwestern where she practiced at Parkland Hospital. Dr. Mandarino was previously director of Arizona State University’s Center for Metabolic Biology and the Mayo/ASU Center for Metabolic & Vascular Biology at Mayo Clinic Arizona.

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“Dr. Lawrence Mandarino Recognized with College of Medicine – Tucson Mentoring Award” | Posted July 21, 2020