Geralyn M. Lambert-Messerlian and V. Daniel Castracane

Inhibins play a critical role in human reproduction. The guest editors for this issue of Seminars in Reproductive Medicine are Drs. Geralyn Lambert-Messerlian and Daniel Castracane. They have recruited some of the top investigators in the field of inhibin research and have provided the title for this issue as “Inhibins: The ‘New’ Reproductive Hormones.”

Dr. Geralyn M. Lambert-Messerlian received a B.A. degree from Wheaton College and a doctoral degree from Boston University. She received postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and currently is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown Medical School.

Inhibin was a reproductive hormone about which relatively little was known in 1990. Dr. Lambert-Messerlian was involved in the development of the first specific immunoassays for inhibin and performed studies that helped to define the normal physiology of inhibin in men and women. This work subsequently led her to study inhibin and related proteins, such as activin, in infertility, cancer, and pregnancy. In that regard, she had an instrumental role in the development of two clinical applications of the inhibin immunoassay; prenatal screening for Down syndrome and assessment of ovarian reserve. These tests are now widely used throughout the world.

She has ongoing research projects on inhibin and activin in preeclampsia, endometriosis, ovarian cancer, oocyte maturation, and fetal development in collaboration with investigators in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Pathology at Women & Infants Hospital and elsewhere. Most recently, she was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to examine the role of activin in human fetal palate development, a project that resulted from the fusion of her interest and experience in the inhibin family with her later training in prenatal testing.

In addition to her basic research interests, she has served as the manager for the laboratory portion of the largest multicenter NIH obstetrical grant ever awarded. The objective of the FASTER trial was to compare first- and second-trimester prenatal screening in 38,000 women across the country with all serum measurements performed in the laboratory. She was responsible for hiring and training staff and daily supervision of data and patient reports.

Dr. Castracane served as a guest editor on leptin in Seminars in Reproductive Medicine and is well known to the readers. Dr. Dan Castracane received a B.A. degree from Temple University; a master’s in biology and experimental embryology from Villanova University; and a doctoral degree from Rutgers University. He then spent time as a research scientist at the Southwestern Foundation for Research and Education in San Antonio, and he has been on the faculty of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Texas Tech University Health Science Center in Amarillo, Texas. Dr. Castracane is a recognized expert in several areas of reproductive medicine and has published 100 peer-reviewed articles. He is a member of several scientific organizations and serves on three editorial boards at present.