LAUSR

Uri Liberman, a trailblazing pioneer in our field, has passed away. To his daughters, Tamar and Michal, and seven grandchildren, we extend our sincerest sympathy. As part of the community to which he devoted his career, we are deeply saddened. His lossmakes us all less, but his contributions to the field of metabolic bone diseases has made us so much more. After completing his medical studies at the Hebrew University in 1961, Uri received training in internal medicine at Beilinson Hospital under the direction of Andre de Paris. Other distinguished mentors who influenced Uri’s career include Professors CE Dent, Chris Nordin, Isadore Edelman, and Gerald Aurbach. These mentors set a course for Uri that encompassed several phases, all of which led to enormous scientific contributions. His early interest in renal physiology and the pathophysiology of kidney stones led to insights into etiological roles for calcium, uric acid, xanthine, cystine, and phosphate as key risk factors. Together with Isidore Edelman, at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Uri related thyroid thermogenesis to Na + K ATPase activity in skeletal muscle and in the renal tubule. In a series of landmark studies that encompassed over two decades of work, starting at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Uri described a number of genetic abnormalities associated with resistance to 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D. The various clinical and genetic phenotypes of vitamin D resistant rickets became Uri’s special area of expertise. For these disorders, Uri helped to elucidate their clinical, metabolic, biochemical, and genetic features. Together, they stand as hallmarks of vintage translational research. Extending this work further, Uri investigated actions of vitamin D on normal and abnormal cells not classically recognized as targets: mast cells, monocytes, lymphocytes, thymocytes, as well as breast and renal cancer cells. These observations set the stage for our current understanding of the pleiotropic actions of vitamin D. Part of Uri Liberman’s enduring legacy is publishing, as the lead author, one of the seminal papers on the pharmacological management of postmenopausal osteoporosis. Bisphosphonate therapy had been under study in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a potential alternative to hormone replacement with estrogen (with or without progestins) for the preservation of bone mass. What became known as the Liberman paper was the first report from a large and well-designed placebocontrolled clinical trial examining the effects of alendronate, a bisphosphonate, in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis. It clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of this oral bisphosphonate as compared with placebo, to increase bone mineral density and to reduce the incidence of new vertebral fractures. This publication initiated an era in which reports of further trials of this and other bisphosphonates in themanagement of postmenopausal osteoporosis, male osteoporosis, and steroid induced osteoporosis followed. Uri Liberman’s role in providing the first definitive clinical data with alendronate, leading to its approval by regulatory agencies and its clinical availability, is one of his key contributions to the field of bone and mineral metabolism. Uri was present at the first Annual Meeting of the ASBMR in Anaheim, 1979, and virtually every one thereafter. An inaugural member of the ASBMR, he was a member of the first Editorial Board of the JBMR. Uri was elected to the newly constituted Board of Governors of the International Osteoporosis Foundation in 1998, serving for over a decade. He also served on the Board of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Paget’s Disease