BAS Annual Virtual Meeting 2021

Prof Vicente Andrés

PhD
Full Professor
Laboratory of Molecular and Genetic Cardiovascular Pathophysiology
Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC)
Madrid
Spain

Dr. Andrés obtained his PhD in Biological Sciences (University Barcelona, 1990), and received postdoctoral training at Children’s Hospital, Harvard University (1991-1994) and St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Tufts University (1994-1995). In 1995, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine at Tufts Univ, and returned to Spain in 1999 to establish his research group at the Institute of Biomedicine of Valencia-CSIC. In 2009, he moved to Madrid to lead the laboratory of Molecular and Genetic Cardiovascular Pathophysiology in the CNIC, where he holds the position of Director of Basic Research Department since 2015. His lab has identified cell cycle and transcription factors that regulate atherosclerosis & restenosis and biomarkers of these diseases, and has unveiled genetic, cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying physiological and premature aging and associated cardiovascular disease (CVD). His translational research program provides a framework for understanding how genes and environmental factors dictate aging and CVD with the ultimate goal of improving diagnosis and treatment.

As an acknowledgement of his long internationally-recognized scientific career, Dr. Andrés received the Dr. León Dumont Prize 2010 from the Belgian Society of Cardiology. His pioneering work on progeria was rewarded in 2014 with an Established Investigator Award from the Progeria Research Foundation (PRF) and he is member of its Medical Research Committee since 2015.

Prof Markus Schlaich

Dobney Chair in Clinical Research
Dobney Hypertension Centre
School of Medicine – Royal Perth Hospital Unit
Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences | The University of Western Australia

Professor Schlaich is a renal physician and a European Society of Hypertension (ESH) accredited hypertension specialist with a strong background in clinical research. His main scientific interests focus on pathophysiologic aspects of hypertension, involvement of the kidneys, and hypertension mediated organ damage. Professor Schlaich has a specific interest in treatment modalities targeting the sympathetic nervous system and has contributed to the development of renal denervation and carotid body modulation as alternative therapeutic approaches for hypertension, and more recently hepatic denervation for modulation of glucose metabolism. He has authored more than 400 articles and book chapters in peer reviewed journals and has received several research prizes and awards including the ESH Björn Folkow Award for outstanding contribution to original research in hypertension. He currently serves as President of the High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia and is on the Scientific Council of the International Society of Hypertension for which he previously served as treasurer. He is a founding member of the European Society of Hypertension Working Group on Interventional Treatment of Hypertension. He serves on the Editorial Board of Hypertension, Journal of Hypertension, andCurrent Hypertension Reports. He has been involved in guideline development both nationally (2016 Heart Foundation Guidelines) and internationally (2020 ISH Global Hypertension Practice Guidelines). He is passionate about educating the next generation of clinician researchers and has received the inaugural Mentorship Award from the Royal Perth Hospital.

Prof Sir Mark Caulfield

MD FRCP FESC FHonPharm FBHS FMedSci
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Barts Life Sciences 
London

Sir Mark Caulfield graduated in Medicine in 1984 from the London Hospital Medical College and trained in Clinical Pharmacology at St Bartholomew’s Hospital where he developed a research programme in molecular genetics of hypertension, which has discovered over 1000 gene loci for blood pressure.

He was Director of the William Harvey Research Institute between 2002 and 2020 and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2008. Since 2008 he directs the National Institute for Health Research Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit and Centre at Barts. Between 2010 and 2015 he co-led the merger of three hospitals in North London to create the new £400 million Barts Heart Centre.

He has won the Lily Prize of the British Pharmacology Society, the Bjorn Folkow Award of the European Society of Hypertension 2016 and the Franz Volhard Award of the International Society of Hypertension in 2018.

In 2013 he became an NIHR Senior Investigator and was Chief Scientist for Genomics England (100,000 Genomes Project) between 2013 until 2021. Sir Mark was awarded a Knighthood in the June 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to the 100,000 Genomes Project. He cocreated the National Genomic Test Directory and the Genomic Medicine Service bringing equity of access to genomic testing across 56 million people.

Sir Mark is now Chief Executive of Barts Life Sciences, which is a £600 million Life Science expansion of Queen Mary University of London, Barts Health, and industrial partnerships in 1 million square feet of space in Whitechapel.

Dr Sarah Teichmann

Head of Cellular Genetics
Wellcome Sanger Institute
Cambridge

Sarah Teichmann is interested in global principles of regulation of gene expression and protein complexes, with a focus on immunity. Sarah did her PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK and was a Beit Memorial Fellow at University College London. She started her group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 2001, discovering stereotypical pathways of assembly and evolution of protein complexes during this time. In 2013, she moved to the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton/Cambridge, jointly with the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI). In February 2016 she became Head of the Cellular Genetics Programme at the WSI and co-founded the Human Cell Atlas international initiative which she continues to lead. Sarah was elected a member of EMBO in 2012, a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015 and a fellow of the Royal Society in 2020.

Dr Murray Clarke

BHF Senior Fellow
Department of Cardiovascular Medicine
The University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke’s Hospital
Cambridge, UK

Murray is a BHF Senior Fellow with extensive experience in cardiovascular, cell death and immunology research. For the last 12 years he has been running a research group whose interests lie in understanding the downstream consequences of cell death, how this influences innate and adaptive immunity, and how this affects cardiovascular disease. His group has a strong interest in the apical inflammatory cytokine IL-1, and they have identified novel molecular mechanisms that control its activation and signalling, and how aberration of these processes drive immune dysfunction in vivo. The group also have a strong interest in cellular senescence and how IL-1α drives senescent cell-associated inflammation, which is pivotal in multiple diseases. A thorough understanding of the basic mechanisms controlling IL-1 will enable rational targeting of its disease promoting activities without compromising its vital role in host defence.

Prof. David G. Harrison

M.D.
Betty and Jack Bailey Professor of Medicine
Pharmacology and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, USA

Dr. Harrison is the Betty and Jack Bailey Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He received his MD degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1974 and obtained his house staff and clinical cardiology training at Duke University. From 1980-82, he completed a cardiovascular research fellowship at the University of Iowa. In 1982, he joined the faculty at the University of Iowa, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1987. In 1990, he joined Emory University, where he was appointed Professor of Medicine.  From 2000 to 2009, Dr. Harrison served as the Director of Cardiology at Emory. In January of 2011, Dr. Harrison became the Director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

His career has been devoted to basic research related to vascular function, the practice of cardiology and the education of young physicians. Dr. Harrison has been an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and has served on numerous committees for the AHA, served as the Chairman of the American Heart Association Council on Circulation, and served as Chairman of the National Institutes of Health Experimental Cardiovascular Studies Study Section (ECS). Dr. Harrison has served on the editorial boards of multiple journals and has given numerous invited and named lectures.  He has received several awards most notable are the 2004 Novartis award from the American Heart Association for outstanding research in hypertension, the Robert Berne Award from the Cardiovascular Section of the American Physiology Society (APS), the Carl Wiggers Award from the APS for outstanding research in cardiovascular physiology, the 2010 Distinguished Scientist Award at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association (AHA) and most recently, the 2018 Basic Science award from the American Heart Association for “lasting contributions that changed the direction of research in hypertension and its complications.”

Prof Jacob Fog Bentzon, 

MD, PhD
Full professor, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares, Madrid, Spain
Professor of Experimental Atherosclerosis, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

Jacob Fog Bentzon is group leader at CNIC, Madrid, Spain, and Professor of Experimental Atherosclerosis Research at Aarhus University, Denmark. Together with a cross-institutional group of researchers and students, he studies disease mechanisms in atherosclerosis and develops research tools for that field. Recent achievements include techniques to induce atherosclerosis in mice and minipigs, re-assessment of clinical imaging techniques for atherosclerosis, and the identification of new atherogenic disease mechanisms.

His interest in atherosclerosis was sparked during medical school where he trained in experimental research with Professor Erling Falk at Aarhus University, Denmark. After graduating, he returned to the Falk lab in 2004 to complete a PhD on the cellular biology of atherosclerosis. He subsequently did a postdoc in genetic engineering before starting as an independent researcher in 2010.

Jacob Fog Bentzon has published 67 papers in the field of atherosclerosis and is on the editorial board for ATVB and JACC. The team is funded mainly from the European Research Council (Consolidator grant), the Novo Nordisk Foundation (Hallas Møller Ascending Investigator grant), the La Caixa Foundation and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Prof Catherine M Shanahan

PhD
Professor of Cellular Signaling
Vice Dean (Development, Diversity and Inclusion) FoLSM
School of Cardiovascular Medicine and Sciences
King’s College London, London, UK

Professor Shanahan was educated in Australia and obtained a PhD in Genetics from the University of Adelaide. She began research in the field of cardiovascular medicine in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Cambridge UK.  From 1995-2004 she was a British Heart Foundation Lecturer and in 2005 became a BHF Senior Fellow in the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge.  In 2007 she left Cambridge to take up the Chair of Cellular Signalling in the School of Cardiovascular Medicine and Sciences at King’s College London and is currently Section Head for Vascular Biology.

Professor Shanahan’s work focuses on mechanisms of vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) dysfunction in ageing and disease and she performed pioneering work in the area of vascular calcification. She has published over 200 articles, reviews and book chapters.

She is a member of the British Atherosclerosis Society, British Society of Cardiovascular Research, European Vascular Biology Organisation and North America Vascular Biology Organisation and serves on the Editorial Boards of Circulation Research and Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.  She is also Vice-Dean of Development, Diversity and Inclusion for the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine.

Professor Catherine Boileau

University of Paris Medical School and Inserm U1148
Chair of the Genetics Department, Bichat university
Paris, FRANCE

Prof Catherine Boileau is the current Chair of the Genetics Department at Bichat university hospital and teaches Genetics at the Medical School of Paris University. She has performed research for over 35 years at Inserm. She was President of the first Scientific Advisory Board of the French Foundation of Rare Diseases and went on to be the Research Director of the Northern University Hospitals (4 hospitals with over 2000 beds, 130 senior medical staff and over 400 residents, and 4 Inserm research institutes). She also served on both the Medical Board and the Governing Board of the Paris University Hospitals (Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris).

Prof Boileau is author of over 300 international publications, and her research is aimed at understanding mechanisms of various inherited cardiovascular diseases. It relies on close interaction with reference clinical centers nationwide and combines genetics, genomics, cell and animal biology. In FH, she identified PCSK9 as a major actor of cholesterol metabolism. Indeed, she identified the first human mutations in its gene in FH patients. She thus made the original scientific contribution that lead to the development of current anti-PCSK9 therapies. She has also shown that beyond FH, PCSK9 mutations were associated with combined dyslipidemia. Beyond PCSK9, she showed that other genes were involved in FH, some still unknown.

Professor Steffen Massberg

Professor of Cardiology
Director of the Department of Cardiology
LMU University of Munich
Germany

Steffen Massberg holds the Chair of Internal Medicine/Cardiology at LMU, and is the Director of Medical Clinic I at the LMU Medical Center. Moreover he is principle investigator at the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK).

His research focuses on the role of the immune responses in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases. He is Deputy Coordinator of the Collaborative Research Center on “Trafficking of Immune Cells in Inflammation, Development and Disease” (SFB 914) and Coordinator of the Clinician Scientist Programme (PRIME), both of which are funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Steffen Massberg studied at LMU, where he obtained his doctorate and worked as a Research Associate until 1999. Following a stint as a Heisenberg Fellow at Harvard Medical School in Boston (USA) during the period 2005-2007, he took up a position at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). From 2010 on, he served as Senior Physician and Deputy Director of the Department of Cardiology at the German Heart Centre in Munich and the TUM Medical Centre (Klinikum rechts der Isar), before returning to LMU in 2012. He is a founding member of the Munich Heart Alliance and a member of its Supervisory Board, and has received many awards for his contributions to research.

Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak

DBE, MD, FRCP, FAHA, FRSE, FMedSci
Regius Professor of Medicine, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow

Professor Dominiczak is Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Glasgow; Honorary Consultant Physician and Endocrinologist at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde; and Health Innovation Champion for the Medical Research Council.  In 2016, she was awarded a DBE for services to cardiovascular and medical science.

Recognised as a world-leading cardiovascular scientist and clinical academic, her major research interests are in hypertension, cardiovascular genomics and precision medicine, where she not only publishes extensively in top peer-reviewed journals, but also excels in large scale research funding for programmes and infrastructure (total value in excess of £100M over last eight years).

From 2010 – 2020, Professor Dominiczak was Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow.  She was the driving force behind the fundraising, development and delivery of the University of Glasgow’s clinical academic campus at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, home to a Clinical Innovation Zone from which she led a triple helix partnership between academia, the NHS and industry to accelerate innovation, maximise patient benefit and stimulate business growth, including a collaboration of four Scottish universities, four NHS Health Boards across Scotland and two major industry partners in a public/private partnership focused on precision medicine.

Professor Tomasz Guzik

MD Ph.D. FRCP, FACP
Regius Chair of Physiology/Cardiovascular Pathobiology 
Institute of Cardiovascular & Medical Sciences
University of Glasgow
Scotland, UK

Prof Tomasz Guzik MD Ph.D. FRCP, FACP is a Regius Chair of Physiology and Cardiovascular Pathobiology in the ICAMS of University of Glasgow and an Honorary Consultant Physician in Cardiology at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.

Prof. T Guzik’s research is focused on vascular biology, hypertension, and clinical immunology and authored over 250 publications in leading journals including  Circulation, Circulation Research, J Clin Invest, J Exp Med, Eur Heart J, JACC, New Engl J. Med, and Lancet, cited over 15,000 times (H index – 60). He published highly cited papers on oxidative stress in human vasculature and, more recently, identifying role of inflammation in hypertension. Prof Guzik is a specialist clinically trained in general medicine, allergic diseases, and clinical immunology. In recent years his work has focused on understanding the immune mechanisms of hypertension and translating this knowledge in humans. Mechanistically he focuses on an interplay between cardiovascular inflammation and oxidative stress in CVD.

Prof Guzik serves as an Editor-in-Chief of Cardiovascular Research, is highly involved in work for the European Society of Cardiology as a member of the Board (2018-2022) and Chair of the ESC Publications Committee. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the British Atherosclerosis Society and a Scientific Advisory Board of the DZHK, a funding agency of the German Ministry of Education and Research.

Prof. Guzik’s work received international recognition through awards such as the Welcome Trust Senior International Research Fellowship, EMBO, Marshall Prize in Research Excellence from the British Society for Cardiovascular Research, or Corcoran Lecture from the American Heart Association. His research is currently funded by the European Research Council (ERC), British Heart Foundation, European Commission.