Thomas Quertermous

Thomas Quertermous MD, William G. Irwin Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine 

Research Description: Dr. Quertermous has had a longstanding interest in insulin resistance and adult onset diabetes (T2D), focusing primarily on the identification of genes that mediate the variance in insulin sensitivity, and thus are likely contributors to insulin resistance. He created the Genetics of Insulin Sensitivity (GENESIS) consortium when it first became apparent that genome-wide association (GWA) studies of T2D would not fully address the genetic basis of insulin resistance. The goal of this study has been to use insulin clamp measures as the physiological variable of insulin sensitivity for application of GWA methodology, and he has enlisted collaborating investigators worldwide with significant numbers of subjects evaluated by insulin clamp for which DNA is also available. Dr. Quertermous has conducted a GWA study in over 000 subjects, and is currently working to replicate the top findings in additional subjects with insulin clamp measures of insulin sensitivity. One near genome-wide associated variant and related gene identified through these studies is currently being investigated with follow-up in vitro and animal model studies. As PI of the Genetics of Insulin Sensitivity iPSC (GENESiPS) study, Dr. Quertermous leads a collaborative effort to develop 200 iPSC lines from subjects of the GENESIS consortium, and this group is differentiating these cells into metabolic and vascular cell types in an effort to map insulin sensitivity genes. These studies have already shown that variance in the insulin mediated glucose uptake is a cell autonomous phenotype highly correlated to measures of insulin sensitivity.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Cook NL, Pjanic M, Emmerich AG, Rao AS, Hetty S, Knowles JW, Quertermous T, Castillejo-López C, Ingelsson E. CRISPR-Cas9-mediated knockout of SPRY2 in human hepatocytes leads to increased glucose uptake and lipid droplet accumulation. BMC Endocr Disord. 2019 Oct 29; 19(1):115. PMID: 31664995; PMCID: PMC6820957. [Cites P30] 

  2. Fathzadeh M, Li J, Rao A, Cook N, Chennamsetty I, Seldin M, Zhou X, Sangwung P, Gloudemans MJ, Keller M, Attie A, Yang J, Wabitsch M, Carcamo-Orive I, Tada Y, Lusis AJ, Shin MK, Molony CM, McLaughlin T, Reaven G, Montgomery SB, Reilly D, Quertermous T, Ingelsson E, Knowles JW. FAM13A affects body fat distribution and adipocyte function. Nat Commun. 2020 Mar 19;11(1):1465. PMID: 32193374; PMCID: PMC7081215. [Cites P30] 

  3. Kanchan K, Iyer K, Yanek LR, Carcamo-Orive I, Taub MA, Malley C, Baldwin K, Becker LC, Broeckel U, Cheng L, Cowan C, D'Antonio M, Frazer KA, Quertermous T, Mostoslavsky G, Murphy G, Rabinovitch M, Rader DJ, Steinberg MH, Topol E, Yang W, Knowles JW, Jaquish CE, Ruczinski I, Mathias RA. Genomic integrity of human induced pluripotent stem cells across nine studies in the NHLBI NextGen program. Stem Cell Res. 2020 Jul; 46:101803. PMCID: PMC7575060. [Cites P30] 

  4. Shahbazi M, Cundiff P, Zhou W, Lee P, Patel A, D'Souza SL, Abbasi F, Quertermous T, Knowles JW. The role of insulin as a key regulator of seeding, proliferation, and mRNA transcription of human pluripotent stem cells. Stem Cell Res Ther. 2019 Jul 29;10(1):228. doi: 10.1186/s13287-019-1319-5. PMID: 31358052; PMCID: PMC6664730. [Cites P30]