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Dr. Steven J. Russell is instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Russell is working to understand the role of insulin in regulating lifespan and stress resistance. He is studying a long-lived mouse that lacks the ability to sense the hormone insulin in its fat. Lack of insulin or generalized unresponsiveness to insulin causes diabetes, but lack of insulin response in the fat alone actually protects against diabetes, obesity, and several kinds of stress. It also increases lifespan and improve the health of old mice.

In addition to work on aging in mice, Dr. Russell is also working to improve blood glucose control in human patients with diabetes by using emerging technologies. Good blood sugar control is essential to preventing the complications of diabetes. These complications, such as accelerated cardiovascular disease, eye disease, chronic kidney disease, and heart failure are similar to problems associated with aging, but are accelerated by poor blood sugar control in people with diabetes. Dr. Russell is collaborating with engineers at Boston University to test a closed-loop, automated blood glucose control system in human subjects with type 1 diabetes.    

Dr. Russell received his MD and PhD degrees in 2001 from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and diabetes, endocrinology, and metabolism at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.