Sherman Prize: Dermot McGovern, MD, PhD, Cedars-Sinai Director of Translational Research
The Sherman Prize recently featured genetics expert Dermot McGovern, MD, PhD, director of Translational Research in the F. Widjaja Inflammatory Bowel Disease Institute at Cedars-Sinai, in a video about his distinguished career. McGovern recently received the prestigious Sherman Prize for his pioneering work in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
In the video, McGovern, director of Precision Health at Cedars-Sinai, said his parents instilled in him the importance of getting an education, helping others and improving society. This led him to become a physician-scientist developing personalized medicine to improve the lives of people with IBD.
“I had a formative experience with one patient who asked me, ‘How do you know this is the right treatment for me?’” McGovern said. “And there wasn’t a right answer for that question.”
McGovern said decades of collaboration with Stephan Targan, MD, director of the F. Widjaja Inflammatory Bowel Disease Institute and a past recipient of the Sherman Prize, led to a new investigative treatment that, if approved, would be the first targeted therapy for IBD patients.
“Every week I see people where our current treatments are failing them,” said McGovern, the Joshua L. and Lisa Z. Greer Chair in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Genetics at Cedars-Sinai. “We’ve got no excuse not to work together to change that. People desperately need us to make progress.”
McGovern conducts IBD research around the globe in hopes that new treatments also can help Black, Latin and East Asian populations.
“We need to embrace new technologies and recognize that it’s a global disease,” he said. “And if we embrace all of that, I think we’ll see cures for IBD in the not-too-distant future.”
Click here to watch the video from the Sherman Prize.