Prof. Zvi Laron has been awarded The Israel Prize (the country’s highest honor) for Medical Research 2009. Zvi Laron, Professor Emeritus of Pediatric Endocrinology, Tel Aviv University and Director of the Endocrinology & Diabetes Research Unit at Schneider Children's, was recognized for his groundbreaking studies on growth hormone activity, which influenced the treatment of children of short-stature. His findings were and are considered medical milestones to this day.

In 1958–1959, at a time when no assay for human growth hormone (hGH) was as yet available, Prof. Laron studied three siblings because of marked short stature. Their ages were 3½, 1½, and a newborn baby, and belonged to a consanguineous Jewish family of Yemenite origin (the parents’ grandparents were first cousins). They had five older siblings of normal stature. According to their appearance, they resembled children with hypopituitarism, reflecting dwarfism, obesity, and severe hypoglycemia. Their underlying defect was thought to be an inborn error in growth hormone (GH) synthesis resulting in an immunologically detectable but metabolically inactive GH.

Within 2 years of the first observation, 20 additional Jewish Oriental patients of Asian Jewish ancestry were identified. It took a further two decades of study of patients from Israeli and Palestinian Arab origin and others from Mediterranean countries until Laron was able to scientifically prove his hypothesis. Together with colleagues, he concluded that they had discovered a familial, most probably hereditary, new syndrome involving hGH. Prof. Laron and his team also disclosed the genetic pathology of the disease by finding that it is caused by molecular defects of the pituitary growth hormone receptor. Subsequent work led to the identification of more than 250 patients worldwide, with the vast majority of cases being traced to Semitic or Mediterranean origins, with numerous patients in Israel, Ecuador, Turkey and the Bahamas. Consanguinity has been a major contributor to its development in described populations. At present, the Israeli cohort consists of 60 patients, many of whom have been followed up closely from infancy to adulthood.

Discovery of this defect in nature enabled Laron and other investigators to unravel the physiology and pharmacology of IGF-I (a hormone that is secreted by the liver and other tissues in response to growth hormone) and many aspects of the interrelationship between GH and IGF-I. Moreover, his follow-up of many patients from infancy to adult age proved that IGF-I deficiency is an important hormone. Its deficiency is very detrimental demanding early diagnosis and replacement treatment.

Laron, for whom this has been a life-time project, was the first to start treatment of these patients with biosynthetic IGF-1 which he continues to do to this day, enabling children with this syndrome to grow. He was also the first to develop a multidisciplinary model for the treatment of juvenile diabetes. His work has gained international acclaim along with many prizes. In recognition of his tremendous contribution to Medicine and Pediatric Medicine in particular, Prof. Zvi Laron was awarded The Israel Prize for Medical Research in 2009.

Zvi Laron was born in Romania and immigrated to Israel upon the founding of the State. He studied at the Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem and specialized in endocrine diseases in children at Harvard University’s Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Upon his return to Israel, he founded the Institute of Endocrinology and Diabetes - the largest in the country - which he headed until his retirement in 1992. With the opening of the medical school at Tel Aviv University, Prof. Laron was first appointed associate professor and then professor, and participated in formulating the course in Pediatrics, where he still teaches. Since 1992, Prof. Laron has served in a volunteer capacity as the Director of the Endocrinology and Diabetes Research Unit at Schneider Children’s.

Prof. Laron teaches students studying towards their second and third degrees at Tel Aviv University and is editor of the international scientific journal Pediatric Endocrinology Review. During his career, he has published more than 1,000 scientific articles and written and edited about 30 books. Prof. Laron has been recognized internationally and among others, accorded an honorary doctorate from three universities in the world, and a member of the Scientific Academy in Germany.

According to Prof. Joseph Press, Director of Schneider Children’s: “We are enormously proud that Prof. Laron has been awarded The Israel Prize for Medical Research in 2009 in recognition of his huge accomplishments. Prof. Laron follows the late Prof. Rina Zaizov Marx, founder of Pediatric Oncology in Israel, who was awarded the prize in 2005. There is no greater source of pride for the hospital.”