Robert C. Moellering

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Robert C. Moellering Jr. (born June 9, 1936 in Lafayette (Indiana) - † February 20, 2014 ) was an American medical doctor who worked on infectious diseases. He was a professor at Harvard Medical School .

Moellering studied at Valparaiso University in Indiana with a bachelor's degree in 1958 as the best of his class and at Harvard Medical School (degree cum laude 1962) and completed his specialist training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital (internship, residency). From 1967 to 1969 he was a Research Fellow for Infectious Diseases and a Clinical Fellow from 1969/70. In 1980 he became Chief Physician and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the New England Deaconess Hospital, which he remained after the merger with the Beth Israel Hospital to form the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (a teaching hospital of the Harvard Medical School) from 1996 to 2005. In 1999 he became Hermann L. Blumgart Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

He was particularly concerned with antibiotics (tests and mechanisms of action) in infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance. For example, he recognized the efficiency of the combined therapy of enterococcal infections (which, for example, cause endocarditis ) with streptomycin and gentamicin , which attacks the ribosomes, and penicillin , which attacks the cell wall. This increased the cure rates for enterococcal endocarditis from 40 to over 80 percent. Moellering recognized its importance as a hospital pathogen with particular antibiotic resistance. He was involved in clinical tests of new antibiotics such as vancomycin and linezolid and researched the formation of resistance against them, for example he researched the resistance mechanism of enterococci to vancomycin and identified and sequenced the responsible genes. His group also identified the gene mutations responsible for the resistance of Staphylococcus aureus to vancomycin.

In 2006 he received the Maxwell Finland Award and in 2008 the Alexander Fleming Award . He also received the Hoechst-Roussel Award from the American Academy of Microbiology, of which he was a fellow, the Feldman Prize from IDSA and the Garrod Medal from the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. From 1985 to 1995 he was the editor of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy . In 1991 he was President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). In 2002 he became an honorary member of the Ludwig Heilmeyer Society. In 1980 he received an honorary doctorate from Valparaiso University.

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personal data
SURNAME Moellering, Robert C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American medic
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Lafayette (Indiana)
DATE OF DEATH 20th February 2014