To our School of Medicine community,
I am writing to share the sad news that Case Western Reserve University longtime professor, endocrinologist and researcher, Douglas Kerr, MD, PhD (MED ‘65, GRS ‘65), died Wednesday, April 2, at the age of 88.
Dr. Kerr dedicated more than 40 years to medical research and clinical practice at Case Western Reserve and University Hospitals, contributing landmark discoveries and excellence in patient care. He started as an assistant professor of pediatrics and biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University and Associate Pediatrician at University Hospitals. He worked alongside Dr. Ruth Owens, whom he credited for training him on the job in the field of endocrinology. Together, they founded the Division of Pediatrics of Endocrinology and Metabolism at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, of which he served as chief from 1975–1989.
Dr. Kerr specialized in the study of inherited disorders of energy metabolism, especially in disorders of pyruvate metabolism. With his colleagues Art Zinn and Chuck Hoppel, in 1986, he published the first description of a defect in the pathway for energy metabolism, the Krebs Cycle. He was a co-investigator on the multi-center Diabetes Control and Complications Trial, a landmark study from 1983–1993 which transformed standards of care for diabetes. Dr. Kerr was the founding director of the Center for Inherited Disorders of Energy Metabolism (CIDEM) laboratory, which became one of the major North American referral centers for the diagnosis of mitochondrial diseases.
His many volunteer roles included serving as President of the Society for Inherited Metabolic Disorders, on the Board of Trustees for the Diabetes Association of Cleveland and as the chair of the Ohio Department of Health’s Newborn Screening Committee. Under his direction, Ohio expanded its screening of disorders from age 5 to 28, and he earned bipartisan recognition from the Ohio House of Representatives as one of “Ohio’s finest citizens.” He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Diabetes Association of Greater Cleveland and became an emeritus professor of Case Western Reserve in 2013.
Dr. Kerr was a Case Western Reserve alumnus who earned his MD and PhD through a seven-year program sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. While completing his final year of his program, he met Mary Ann DuMond, a clinical social worker, whom he married in June 1965, one week before he graduated. He completed his pediatric internship and residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and then served in the U.S. Public Health Service, Laboratory of Biochemistry, at the National Heart Institute for two years.
Next, Dr. Kerr received a fellowship to study fasting metabolism in malnourished children at the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit (TMRU) at the University of West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, from 1970 to 1973. The collaborative work he and his colleagues did at TMRU laid the foundation for effective treatment of malnutrition, as the standards of care they developed were adopted by the World Health Organization.
A memorial service will be held on July 26, at 10 a.m., at the Church of the Redeemer, 2420 S. Taylor Rd., Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118. A reception will follow at noon at Judson Manor, 1890 E. 107 St., Cleveland, Ohio 44106.
Sincerely,
Stan Gerson, MD
Dean, CWRU School of Medicine
Director, National Center for Regenerative Medicine