Peter Carmeliet

Peter Carmeliet ( born December 8, 1959 in Leuven ) is a Belgian physician. He is a professor at the Catholic University of Leuven.

Life

Carmeliet 1984 were " maxima cum laude" his degree as a physician ( medical doctor degree ) in Leuven, 1978 Guest scientist was at the University of Maryland and in 1981 at the University of California, San Francisco, graduated from 1984 to 1986 his clinical training in internal medicine at the University Hospital lion and a doctorate in 1989 in Leuven (Ph. D. ). In 1986 he was at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, 1989/90 at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and from 1990 to 1992 at the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1992 he returned to Leuven and established his own research group. In 1994 he was " Hoofdocent " and in 1998 professor with a full professorship from 2000.

He is head of the Laboratory of Angiogenesis and Neurovascular relationships ( Angiogenesis and Neurovascular Link ) and the Laboratory of cell metabolism and proliferation at the Vesalius Research Center, whose director he is. He is also Adjunct Director of the Center for transgenic technology and gene therapy of the VIB ( Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology ).

In 2002 he received the Francqui price, 2005, Interbrew Baillet Latour Health Prize 2010 and the Ernst Jung Prize. He is a member of the Leopoldina since 2010.

He has been married since 1987 and has three children.

Work

Carmeliet deals since the 1980s with the molecular basis of angiogenesis, in particular with VEGF (Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor). Regardless of Napoleon Ferrara him at the beginning of the 1990s saw the development of knockout mice lacking one or both copies of the VEGF gene - in both cases there was severe deformities. The experiments showed that VEGF was very important for the formation of blood vessels in the embryo. They also showed that the blood vessels were the first institutions that formed the embryo.

VEGF (whose gene was first cloned in 1989 ) also plays a role, especially in the development of cancer and has since been extensively studied ( also with the development of antagonists and antibodies against VEGF, especially in cancer therapy). His lab also discovered a role of VEGF in the formation of ALS in the mouse model and developed a gene therapy for it ( in the mouse model ). This was the first indication of the importance of VEGF in neurodegenerative diseases.

Carmeliet examined in his laboratory, other molecules with similar functions such as PlGF ( placental growth factor), which also plays a role in angiogenesis, but only in cancer and inflammation (so that do not result in blockade as VEGF effects on normal blood vessel formation ). With colleagues, he tested drugs that block PlGF.

It also examines the way, such as blood vessels similar to nerve cells in the neoplasm find their way and examined relationships between the two phenomena.