It's critical for physicians to have research experience, says Paul DiCorleto, Ph.D. '78. A practicing biochemist, DiCorleto is chair of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute. The clinic was ranked among the 10 best hospitals in the United States in U.S. News & World Report in 2005, and its heart center has been ranked No. 1 for the past 11 years.

During his nearly 30-year career studying how heart disease progresses at the cellular level, DiCorleto has often collaborated with physicians, who bring their own perspectives to understanding disease processes, he says.

"A scientist who works in a lab as I do doesn't have the same feel for a disease as someone who actually is treating patients suffering from the disease," DiCorleto explains. Likewise, a scientist, because of his training, can make distinct contributions to advancing patient care, he says. Physicians bring an enormous body of knowledge about medicine and medical cases, while scientists are champions at solving problems through scientific reasoning.

Although the national trend is toward fewer physician scientists, DiCorleto has made it a priority to train more of them at the Cleveland Clinic. "We want to graduate more doctors who think about the problems of their patients like scientists do -- who try to find new ways of treatment or of understanding why the disease is developing in the first place," he asserts.

In 2003, a year after he became chair, medical students were standing side by side with institute scientists at the bench, and one took part in studies investigating the role that blood-vessel-lining endothelial cells play in vascular disease in DiCorleto's own cell biology laboratory.

In addition, in a program that DiCorleto midwifed, medical students in the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University now do research for 18 months at the Lerner Research Institute as part of their five-year medical school curriculum and can earn a master of science degree as well as their M.D. if they take extra courses.

In contrast to an administrative structure based on conventional academic disciplines, the Cleveland Clinic promotes what DiCorleto calls "bench to bedside transition of discovery" that comes when investigators and physicians (or others who are treating patients) join forces in creating disease-oriented programs that range from advancing a basic understanding of molecular structures to applied studies leading to improvements in patient care.

"It's a very collegial environment that differs markedly from some academic settings where each lab is a little fiefdom," DiCorleto says. "We don't have that here." As a result, he can recruit top scientists who appreciate the open, collaborative environment.

The Lerner Research Institute now has 130 principal investigators leading teams of more than 1,000 scientists and ranks sixth in winning funding support from the National Institutes of Health. Research activity has increased fivefold since DiCorleto's arrival, and institute research papers appear regularly in respected journals. "It's rewarding to see so much outstanding science going on around me," he says.

Among DiCorleto's many tasks as chair of the Lerner Research Institute are managing a $110 million-a-year operating budget and assisting in the commercialization of the institute's discoveries.

"Getting spin-off companies up and running is a high priority -- not just for the Cleveland Clinic but the city and the state of Ohio," he explains of the promising antidote to job loss in this once-thriving industrial area. "We're receiving large grants from the state and financial help from the city to promote biotech expansion here." The clinic itself has become the greater Cleveland metro area's No. 1 private employer.

At Cornell DiCorleto did wet biochemistry experiments in the laboratory of Donald Zilversmit, professor emeritus in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, who was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences for his contributions to the understanding of lipids and lipid transport and exchange.

DiCorleto went on to do postdoctoral work at the University of Washington, studying the biology of blood vessels and how changes in gene expression lead to heart disease. In 1981 he joined the faculty at the Cleveland Clinic as an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology. There he set up a laboratory to pursue questions about the causes of heart disease that still produces useful findings. He went on to chair his department before assuming his current position as chair of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute in 2002.

This article is adapted from one by Cornell writer Metta Winter that originally was published in the January 2005 Division of Nutritional Sciences newsletter, Nutrition.