There should be, and in the best of cases there is, a synergy between basic research and patient care. However, this synergy is hard to develop because the techniques required to be a successful researcher are so different from the skills required to be an outstanding physician. Harold R. Roberts, M.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is an example of a physician-researcher who has benefited from having his feet in both the world of patient care and the world of the laboratory: he has let clinical problems direct his basic research effort and conversely has adopted research advances in his care of patients. Dr. Roberts's long and continuing career has included many research and clinical advances. He was part of the first group to determine the amino acid sequence of the important thrombin inhibitor hirudin and part of the group that prepared the first cryoprecipitates which were the first alternative to plasma as therapy in hemophilia A. Dr. Roberts has made significant advances in understanding the protein chemistry behind hemophilia B; he was among the first researchers to identify some patients as not being completely deficient but instead as having measurable levels of protein and subsequently demonstrated that this protein was dysfunctional. This important advance led him to a classification scheme for patients into Cross Reacting Material (CRM) positive, negative, and reduced. Dr.
