Terry Smith MD

Dr. Terry J. Smith, the Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor Emeritus in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan, is an internationally-known endocrinologist who has studied Graves’ disease, its eye manifestations, and related autoimmune disease for over 20 years. Dr. Smith’s laboratory was the first to describe the unique molecular attributes of tissue surrounding the eye that make it susceptible to inflammation in Graves' disease. He has identified a novel autoantibody that binds to and activates a specific receptor, resulting in an exaggerated autoimmune response. His investigation of these mechanisms has yielded several potential therapeutic targets that may interrupt the disease process. These will provide the focus for future clinical trials.

Dr. Smith received his medical degree from the University of Missouri School of Medicine and completed his residency at the University of Illinois in Chicago and Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. He has completed fellowships in biophysics at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, in molecular biochemistry at Columbia University in New York, and in clinical endocrinology at the Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago.

Dr. Smith is the author of over 275 articles and book chapters and has been awarded five patents for his research discoveries. He has been elected to the Orbit Society, is the chief scientific officer for the National Graves Foundation, and serves as a reviewer for numerous scientific journals. Dr. Smith has been funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Administration since 1983.