UCSF diabetes chief Mark Anderson elected to National Academy of Sciences

Mark Anderson, MD, PhD, the director of UCSF’s Diabetes Center, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, placing one of San Francisco’s leading diabetes researchers among the most exclusive ranks in American science. The academy announced May 14 that it elected 120 members and 25 international members this year, bringing active membership to 2,705 and international membership to 557.

For UCSF, the honor underscores how much of the city’s biomedical strength still runs through its diabetes program. Anderson has led the Diabetes Center since 2022, and the center, founded in 2000, describes itself as an integrated team of researchers and physicians working across basic, clinical and translational research in Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. That matters far beyond campus prestige: the work reaches patients who depend on better therapies, trial networks that test new treatments, and the physician-scientist pipeline that keeps top talent from leaving San Francisco.

Anderson’s research has focused on the immune system’s role in diabetes, especially the autoimmune attacks that damage insulin-producing cells in the pancreas in Type 1 diabetes. UCSF says his work on the AIRE gene helped explain how the thymus trains the immune system not to attack the body. More recently, he has studied how cancer immunotherapy can trigger Type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases, research aimed at learning how to turn those immune switches back off.

That combination of discovery science and clinical relevance has made Anderson a central figure in UCSF’s effort to keep high-level biomedical research anchored in the city. He also served as director of UCSF’s MD/PhD training program, a role that helped shape the next generation of physician-researchers. His affiliations with the Immune Tolerance Network and TrialNet further tie his work to national efforts to prevent or reverse Type 1 diabetes.

The academy election adds to a growing list of national recognition. Anderson was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020 and received the William B. Coley Award in Basic and Tumor Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute in 2024. At UCSF, he is the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor in Metabolism and Endocrinology and holds the Robert B. Friend and Michelle M. Friend Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research.

For San Francisco, the message is practical as much as symbolic: the city still hosts research that can shape diabetes care, fuel clinical trials and keep elite scientists working here rather than elsewhere.