Faculty Profiles

Eugene J-M.A. Thonar, PhD

Eugene J-M.A. Thonar, PhD, has a primary appointment as Professor of Biochemistry, with secondary appointments as professor of internal medicine (Section of Rheumatology) and orthopedic surgery. In 1976, he received a PhD in biochemistry from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1979, he spent an additional year of training as visiting associate at the National Institute for Dental Research at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. The following year he accepted an invitation to join the Department of Biochemistry at Rush Medical College, Rush University Medical Center.

Dr.Thonar’s research is in the area of articular cartilage in joint diseases with a special emphasis on osteoarthritis. His laboratory focuses on trying to better understand the metabolism of cartilage cells in aging and disease. Dr. Thonar was a pioneer in the developments of assays capable of measuring serum markers of metabolic changes in joint tissues. More recently, he has begun to make significant contributions to our understanding of the metabolism of intervertebral disc cells. In collaboration with Dr. Masuda and colleagues in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery he developed the ARC method to rapidly form in the laboratory cartilage tissue for transplantation into defects.

Dr. Thonar has published approximately 200 full manuscripts and abstracts of more than 250 studies of work presented at national and international conferences. He has served and continues to be active on several editorial boards and study sections of the National Institutes of Health. In 1987 he was the recipient of the Carol-Nachman Prize for Advancement of Clinical, Therapeutic and Experimental Research in Rheumatology, Federal Republic of Germany. In 1992, he was the First Recipient of the Annual National Rehabilitation Week Award from Rush, which has since been renamed The Eugene J-M.A. Thonar, PhD, Award in his honor. A year later, he was awarded the City of Chicago August W. Christmann Award for Technology and Innovation. Finally, in 1998, he was the recipient of the Henri Russe, MD, Humanitarian Award from Rush.