Antonio Gotto

Who is Antonio Gotto?

Dr. Antonio Gotto is Dean of Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He was succeeded by Laurie H. Glimcher in January 2012. Prior to his appointment in 1997, Gotto was chairman of the department of internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine for twenty years, where he collaborated extensively with Michael DeBakey. Gotto is best known for his research into blood lipids. As administrator, he has presided over an enormous growth at Cornell, an affiliation with Houston Methodist Hospital when it separated from Baylor, and a deepening of Cornell's longime affiliation with New York Hospital following its merger with Columbia Presbyterian to form the New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Gotto obtained his bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt, where he was a member of Sigma Nu Fraternity. He then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He subsequently graduated from Vanderbilt's medical school. In the field of atherosclerosis, his basic science research interests include clinical disorders of lipid transport and the structure, metabolism, and function of lipoproteins and apolipoproteins. He and his associates were the first to achieve complete synthesis of a plasma apolipoprotein; they also determined the complete cDNA and amino acid sequence of apo B-100, one of the largest proteins ever sequenced and a key protein in atherosclerosis. Dr. Gotto has played a leading role in several landmark clinical trials demonstrating that cholesterol-lowering drug treatment can reduce the risk for heart disease.