Helen H Hobbs

Helen Hobbs is a physician-scientist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where she directs the McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development. She has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2002. In partnership with Jonathan Cohen, she has identified genes and sequence variations that contribute to metabolic and cardiovascular disorders with a focus on lipids and lipoproteins. By concentrating on alleles of low frequency and large phenotypic effect size, Hobbs and Cohen discovered new therapeutic targets for the prevention and treatment of heart disease.

They identified mutations in PCSK9 that reduce LDL-cholesterol levels and protect individuals from heart attacks ? a discovery that stimulated pharmaceutical companies to develop FDA-approved drugs that target PCSK9 and prevent heart attacks in patients treated with statins. More recently, they identified the first genetic variants that contribute to fatty liver disease (hepatic steatosis, steatohepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma). Hobbs was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (2004) and the National Academy of Sciences (2007) and was recipient of the American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist Award (2007), the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize from Rockefeller University (2015), the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2016), and the Passano Award (with Jonathan Cohen) (2016).