May 7, 2018

The Society for the Study of Inborn Errors of Metabolism (SSIEM) awarded Melanie Gillingham, Ph.D., R.D., associate professor of molecular and medical genetics, OHSU School of Medicine, the 2018 Archibald Garrod Award for her paper "Triheptanoin versus trioctanoin for long-chain fatty acid oxidation disorders."

The Archibald Garrod Award is an annual award given by the SSIEM to honor studies that provide a comprehensive, representative analysis of the clinical features, treatment and outcome of an inborn error of metabolism, published in the preceding year in the Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease.

The Gillingham Lab investigates the metabolic consequences of genetic disorders in the fatty acid oxidation pathway including inherited deficiency of very-long chain acyl CoA dehydrogenase(VLCAD), long-chain 3-hydroxyacyl CoA dehydrogenase (LCHAD), carnitine palmitoyltransferase 2 (CPT2), and carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1A (CPT1A).The overall goal of our research is to twofold: 1) to learn more about the role of fatty acid oxidation in general biology and 2) to develop novel treatments for these rare disorders of fatty acid metabolism.