Our medical center provides an extraordinary opportunity to work with clinicians and scientists with expertise in all facets of HIV/AIDS. Working with them in the diagnosis and treatment of HIV infection and its many complications for over 20 years, I have developed a strong interest in HIV-related hematologic disorders as well as osteoporosis and other metabolic complications arising during antiretroviral therapy for HIV.
Dr. Laurence is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology, Attending Physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and Director of the Laboratory for AIDS Virus Research at those institutions. He is also Senior Consultant for Programs at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, and Editor-in-Chief of three medical journals: The AIDS Reader, AIDS Patient Care and STDs, and Translational Research (formerly the Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine, now in its 93rd year).
Dr. Laurence received his B.A. Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Columbia University in 1972, and his M.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in 1976. He was elected a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford University in 1973. Deferring this honor, he accepted a Henry Luce Fellowship to Japan, where he worked as a research associate at the Institute for Cancer Research in Osaka from 1974-1975. Dr. Laurence returned to New York to complete a residency in internal medicine, followed by fellowships in hematology and oncology at The New York Hospital.
In 1983 Dr. Laurence was invited to the Institut Pasteur in Paris to collaborate with Drs. Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, recent Nobel laureates for the discovery of HIV. Dr. Laurence was first author on their 1984 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine further documenting LAV/HIV as the cause of AIDS, and identifying a carrier state for HIV infection. His current work focuses on the mechanisms by which HIV affects endothelial cells and osteoclasts, in models for heart disease and osteoporosis disease linked to both HIV infection and its treatment. He is also involved in a gene therapy project, by which anti-HIV anti-sense genes are inserted into the stem cells of advanced AIDS patients who are recalcitrant to drug therapy. This is followed by bone marrow ablation and re-infusion of those HIV resistant stem cells back into the patients.
Dr. Laurence has authored over 140 scientific papers related to AIDS. He is a member of several private national and international AIDS organizations. He is a recipient of the Clinician-Scientist Award of the American Heart Association and the William S. Paley Fellowship in Academic Medicine, is a member of the National Council of The Jackson Laboratory, and is an elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences and member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He has 3 children--Auden, Galen and Luca--and, with his wife Susan, lives in Greenwich, CT.
