Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, has been awarded the George M. Kober Medal from the Association of American Physicians in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of gut microbiome research. Gordon, director of the Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is considered to be the father of the field. His contributions have spanned basic science in the lab to clinical trials in Bangladesh showing that the gut microbiome is key to childhood nutrition, orchestrating healthy growth and development in the earliest years of life.
The Kober Medal is the highest honor given by the Association of American Physicians. The award is given annually to a member judged to have had an enormous impact on biomedicine through their scientific discoveries and the training of young scientists who themselves have gone on to make major research contributions. Gordon is being honored April 9 during a virtual ceremony.