Brody Award Means Something a Little More Personal to Dr. Paul Insel
By Chuck Carlson
The Theodore M. Brody Distinguished Lecturer Award certainly means a lot to all those who have received it. But for the 2024 recipient, Dr. Paul Insel, it was also personal.
When he was a medical student at the University of Michigan (U-M) in the Spring of 1966 (May 5 to be exact), the young Insel had a pharmacology class lecture on toxicology that was presented by Dr. Brody, who was then a U-M Professor before he came to Michigan State University in 1966 to create the school's pharmacology department.
So when Dr. Insel, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology and Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), was told he would receive the award, it was an unexpected and treasured "blast from the past."
"In the second year of medical school at U-M, we started the pharmacology course on August 30, 1965, and finished on May 5, 1966," he said with a laugh. "And the final exam was on May 9."
And while he doesn't recall the grade he received in pharmacology, he has a pretty good idea. "I think I received the highest grade in the class," he said. "I had a really good time in that class. Perhaps it contributed to my decision to focus on pharmacology as a physician-scientist."
How does he remember the details from one course more than half a century ago? Before coming to East Lansing to receive the honor, he found two notebooks he used to take notes from the lectures in pharmacology, including Dr. Brody's lectures. He found those weathered, yellowed notebooks in a box at his home in San Diego that his wife had labeled "Paul's mementos."
"I remember thinking years ago, 'I'm working in pharmacology and there might be a time when I might want to go back and see what pharmacology was like at mid-century. Maybe I should keep them,'" he said. "I wasn't sure I had them, but I reached way down in the box, and there they were."
Dr. Brody left U-M shortly after that class because he was recruited to Michigan State University as the inaugural Chair of the Department of Pharmacology. A few years later, it became the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Dr. Brody served as the chair for 20 years.
Dr. Brody's impact on the creation and development of the program was dramatic and foundational. When he reluctantly retired, MSU's program was regarded as one of the finest in the country.
The award, established in 2008, honors those who embody Dr. Brody's vision of pharmacology. Dr. Insel is the 15th recipient.
Those memories of his former instructor flooded back for Dr. Insel as he came to MSU to accept the award and impart his knowledge to faculty and students. He spoke about his specialty, G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), and what he termed "GPCRomics" and its use to identify novel targets for cancer therapeutics.
Along the way, he shared his ancient notebooks with students.
"I felt honored to be able to recognize (Dr. Brody) and bring my books and show my notes of his lectures to students," he said. "It's very cool. I told my wife I'm having 60-year-old flashbacks."
Dr. Susan Barman, the award coordinator, only found out about Dr. Insel's connection with Dr. Brody when he responded to her email congratulating him on receiving the honor.
"I was shocked," she said with a laugh. "As always, I let Steve Brody (Ted's physician-scientist son at Washington University in St. Louis) know who we selected, and he was so happy to know that we selected someone who knew his dad. And the visit was great. So many people have commented on the great talk and how much they enjoyed their one-on-one meetings."
Ironically, Dr. Insel, who earned his M.D. at age 22 and originally planned to become a practicing physician, changed his mind during his medical school years at U-M and chose to become a physician-scientist.
He had taken an organic chemistry course the year before, and it left a strong impression on him.
"You picked up a textbook, and you'd find studies from the 1800s that explained various chemical reactions and how we understood them," he said. "I started asking questions in medical school about how we know that certain ideas presented to us were true, and they'd say we're not really sure. I realized that medical knowledge was primitive and not well-developed. I decided to do some research as a medical student."
That research eventually took him to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and then to academic positions at the University of California, San Francisco, as a research fellow and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology.
He relocated to UCSD in 1978 and became a Professor in 1987. In addition to being a Professor Emeritus, Dr. Insel has been the Director, and more recently co-Director, of the UCSD Medical Scientist (M.D./Ph.D.) Training Program (MSTP).