DuBose earned his medical degree from the University of Alabama in Birmingham and completed his residency training in internal medicine and in nephrology at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Texas. He completed a research fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, accomplished a sabbatical in molecular physiology at the Baylor College of Medicine, in Texas, and began his academic career at the University of Texas Health Science Center, later joining the University of Texas Medical Branch, University of Texas Medical School, in Houston, and the University of Kansas School of Medicine before coming to Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He previously served as president of the American Society of Nephrology, and as chairman of the American Heart Association's Council on the Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease. DuBose holds membership in numerous professional societies and is an author of more than 140 published papers and chapters in textbooks. He is co-editor of the textbook "Acid-Base and Electrolyte Disorders."

Current work in DuBose's laboratory focuses on discovery of how slight decreases in blood pH activate transporters in the kidney to prevent acidosis. These transporters in the kidney, when abnormal or impaired, cause the disease renal tubular acidosis. This disorder causes chronic metabolic acidosis, which in adults causes bone and muscle disease, hypokalemia and progressive kidney disease. In children, it causes abnormalities in growth.

Douglas Lyles, Ph.D., professor and chair of biochemistry, director of the Cell Growth and Survival Program of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, and former co-director of the Translational Technologies and Resources Program of the Translational Science Institute. Lyles shared the award for "Established Investigator in Basic Sciences" with DuBose. His work focuses on viruses and how they develop and kill cells.

Lyles has two active research programs that have led to translational projects on the development of novel vaccines and the development of novel viruses for the treatment of cancer. He and his colleagues are also currently working on the development of a vaccine against HIV/AIDS, based on the findings of their previous research.

Lyles received his degree in biochemistry from the University of Mississippi Medical Center and was a postdoctoral fellow in the virology laboratory at Rockefeller University until 1978, when he joined the faculty of the Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University as an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology and rose through the ranks to his current position. Lyles has served on numerous study sections and grant review panels, most recently serving as chair of the Virology B Study Section from 2006 to 2008. Lyles also serves as an editor for the Journal of Virology.

Deborah A. Meyers, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Co-Director of the Center for Human Genomics. Meyers received the "Established Investigator in Clinical Sciences Award" for her work in the genetics of common respiratory diseases.

Meyers is a founding member of the International Society for Genetic Epidemiology. She has had extensive experience with family studies and case-control studies of common diseases, such as asthma, allergy and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), aimed at finding genetic changes that make some individuals more susceptible to developing these diseases than others. She has been involved in genetic studies of asthma and allergy for many years, resulting in the identification of multiple genes important in disease susceptibility, disease severity and response to treatment. She currently has ongoing studies looking into asthma and related measures of lung function and different aspects of obstructive airways diseases, such as smoking related COPD.

Meyers has authored or co-authored more than 270 scientific manuscripts, reviews and book chapters, is a fellow of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, and is associate editor for Human Genetics and the European Respiratory Journal.

Source: Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center