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Roger Cone, PhD

Mary Sue Coleman Director, Life Sciences Institute
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI, United States

Roger Cone joined the University of Michigan as 2016 as the Director of the Life Sciences Institute, and was appointed Vice Provost for the Biosciences in 2017. Prior to Michigan, Cone was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt University from 2008-2016, and a faculty member of the Vollum Institute, Oregon Health Sciences University from 1990 - 2008. Cone is credited with the discovery of multiple fundamental biological roles for the melanocortin system in energy homeostasis. These findings resulted from studies cloning and characterizing the five receptors for the melanocortin peptides, and analyzing the pharmacological and physiological functions of these receptors. Cone’s group provided the genetic and pharmacological validation of the melanocortin-4 and melanocortin-3 receptors as critical regulators of energy homeostasis, leading to the discovery of mutations in the MC4R as the leading cause of syndromic obesity, and development of the first drug for syndromic obesity, the MC4R agonist Imcivree, approved by the FDA in 2020. Cone has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2010), and the National Academy of Medicine (2016) for his work, and received numerous awards, including the Berson Award, Berthold Memorial Award, Ipsen Prize, and the Rolf Luft Prize.

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