Dr Donald McClain

Professor Emeritus, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Internal Medicine (Winston-Salem), Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

Don McClain MD, PhD is the Johnston Professor of Diabetes Research in the Department of Internal Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine; Director of the NIH-funded North Carolina Diabetes Research Center; and serves part time as a Staff Physician/Investigator at the Salisbury VA Medical Center. He received his medical degree and PhD from the Rockefeller/Cornell MD/PhD program. He received training in Internal Medicine at Stanford and Endocrinology at UCSD. He has held faculty positions at UCSD, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Utah, and their associated VA Medical Centers, before coming to North Carolina in 2014.

Dr. McClain’s research relates to type 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity, from molecular biology, animal models, first-in-human studies, to investigator-initiated clinical trials based on that work. His current research focuses on the role of dietary iron in weight and appetite regulation and in the pathogenesis and treatment of diabetes.

Updated 15 May 2025