Mitchell L. Drumm

How many people in the world can claim they discovered a gene? Certainly not very many, but Dr. Mitchell L. Drumm became the co-discoverer of the gene that causes cystic fibrosis as he was working on his doctorate in 1990. Drumm’s parents are extremely proud of their son, a graduate of New Philadelphia City’s New Philadelphia High School. “My mom and dad were both teachers and their main style of helping me along was to simply allow me to follow my interests … after fourth grade I brought home some mice,” Drumm said. “One was black and white and the other brown. Turns out, one was a boy and one wasn’t. “I eventually learned how to tell them apart … those two mice had pups of varying colors and their pups had pups, and so I tracked what colors came from which mice. So started the interest in genetics, and this became my fifth-grade science project.” To this day, he still has the documentation from his project, which his mother had laminated. ”I have very fond memories of my school years,” Drumm said. “Our education was a balance of classroom and textbook lessons, along with life lessons. We weren’t overly burdened with homework and had time to learn from experiences, both positive and negative.” After high school, Drumm received a bachelor’s degree in genetics from Ohio State University and a doctorate in human genetics from the University of Michigan. His doctorate was earned in the laboratory of Dr. Francis Collins, with whom he co-discovered the cystic fibrosis gene. Drumm joined the Case Western Reserve University faculty in 1992 as an assistant professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Genetics and Genome Sciences. He now is a professor in both departments and continues to work on cystic fibrosis. He also has authored or co-authored 85 peer-reviewed manuscripts and several book chapters on cystic fibrosis and patents relevant to the disease. In 2007, Drumm was appointed director of basic research at the university’s Willard A. Bernbaum Cystic Fibrosis Research Center and became vice chair for research in the Department of Pediatrics in 2011. Drumm serves as an advisor to several cystic fibrosis research centers, reviews grant applications for the National Institutes of Health and serves numerous roles for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, including co-chair of the foundation’s Research and Research Training Committee. In 2015, he was appointed the inaugural recipient of the Connie and Jim Brown Professorship in Cystic Fibrosis Research. That year he formed The Research Institute for Children’s Health at Case Western to implement translational research programs for other genetic disorders patterned after the successes with cystic fibrosis. He currently serves as the institute’s director. He also is passionate about mentoring and directs a Department of Pediatrics summer internship program that provides laboratory experience to undergraduates from around the country. He mentors undergraduate and graduate students in his lab. In 2009, he was awarded the Bruce M. Jackson Award for Undergraduate Mentoring for his work with Case Western students. Personal quote “Education does not have a single recipe. It requires teachers who can recognize what excites and motivates each student, but it also requires an educational system in which the teachers are permitted to personalize a student’s education accordingly. I was fortunate to have those teachers in that system.”