Workshop programme

Irene Lang

ViennaAustria

Irene M Lang is a clinical cardiologist and Professor of Vascular Biology at the Medical University of Vienna. She has been nominated as one of the WMA–Caring Physicians of the World in 2005. She directs an out-patient clinic for pulmonary vascular diseases and is an active interventional and structural cardiologist. She also leads basic research on the biology of vascular occlusions, with a special focus on chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. Prof. Lang is a Member of the Austrian and European societies of cardiology, member of senate of the Medical University of Vienna and Editor for Pulmonary Circulation, the European Heart Journal and Atherosclerosis.

Alice Lichtenstein

BostonUSA

Dr. Lichtenstein is the Stanley N. Gershoff Professor of Nutrition Science and Policy at the Friedman School, and Director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory and Senior Scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, at Tufts University. Dr. Lichtenstein’s research focuses on assessing the interplay between diet and cardiometabolic health. Past and current work includes trans fatty acids, soy protein and isoflavones, sterol/stanol esters, novel vegetable oils differing in fatty acid profile and glycemic index. Additional work focuses on population-based studies to assess the relation between nutrient biomarkers and cardiovascular health, and application of systematic review methodology to the field of nutrition. She currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Lipid Research, and Executive Editor of the Tufts Health and Nutrition Letter. Dr. Lichtenstein received a BS in nutrition from Cornell University, MS in nutrition from the Pennsylvania State University, and MS and Doctorate in Nutritional Biochemistry from Harvard University, and received her post-doctoral training in the field of lipid metabolism at the Cardiovascular Institute at Boston University School of Medicine. In 2005 Dr. Lichtenstein was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the medical faculty of the University of Kuopio in Finland.

Patrick Schrauwen

MaastrichtThe Netherlands

Patrick Schrauwen, PhD is Professor of Metabolic aspects of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus at the NUTRIM school for Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism. Dr. Schrauwen’s research focuses on the study of the relation between mitochondrial function and ectopic fat storage in muscle and liver and type 2 diabetes/insulin resistance. Dr. Schrauwen combines cellular and molecular biology techniques, state-of-the-art MRI/MRS technology (which are developed within the team) with human clinical intervention trails. Recently, he has been focussing on 24h metabolism in humans, among others showing that skeletal muscle mitochondrial function shows 24h rhythmicity in human volunteers. For his research, he was awarded among others the Corona Gallina Award for excellence in diabetes research in 2013 and the MINKOWSKI Award of the EASD in 2016. He is a board member of the European Association for the study of Diabetes and associate editor of ‘Obesity’. Dr. Schrauwen has published over 250 papers in international journals.

Claudia Monaco

OxfordUK

Claudia Monaco trained as a Cardiologist (1998) and PhD (2001) with Professor Attilio Maseri at the Catholic University of Rome, Italy. During this inspiring time, I was privileged to get involved in the field of inflammation in atherosclerosis when it was still in its infancy with the identification of a cytokine-dependent systemic inflammatory response in patients with acute coronary syndromes. After my PhD studies I moved to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, Imperial College London to work with Professor Marc Feldmann to understand the drivers of tissue inflammation in atherosclerosis. She became a Clinical lecturer/Group Leader at Imperial College in 2003 and moved to the University of Oxford in 2013. Her research demonstrated that human atherosclerotic disease shares features of persistent or chronic inflammation with classic inflammatory diseases, including the dysregulated production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and that such inflammation is dependent on the innate Toll-like receptors. More recently, her lab was one of the first to apply single cell biology techniques to the study of the vascular tissue immune system. I currently head the “Cardiovascular inflammation” Lab, and the Mass Cytometry Facility at NDORMS, Oxford, with a focus on vascular single cell biology.

Manual Mayr

LondonUK

Manuel Mayr qualified in Medicine from the University of Innsbruck (Austria) in 1999. He then moved to London to undertake a PhD on combining proteomics and metabolomics. Upon completion of his PhD in 2005, he achieved promotion to Professor at King’s College London in 2011. In 2017, he has been awarded a British Heart Foundation Personal Chair for Cardiovascular Proteomics.

His group uses proteomics in combination with other -omics technologies to integrate biological information in disease-specific networks that drive pathophysiological changes. While studying molecular interactions has been a research focus for many years and has provided important insight into biology, the attention has now shifted towards a more integrative network biology approach (Nat Rev Cardiol. 2021;18(5):313-330).

His academic achievements have been recognised by the inaugural Michael Davies Early Career Award of the British Cardiovascular Society (2007), the inaugural Bernard and Joan Marshall Research Excellence Prize of the British Society for Cardiovascular Research (2010), the Outstanding Achievement Award by the European Society of Cardiology Council for Basic Cardiovascular Science (2013) and the President’s Distinguished Lecture of the International Society for Heart Research (2022).

Bertrand Cariou

NantesFrance

Pr Cariou (MD, PhD) is a Professor of Endocrinology at the Nantes University Hospital and Medical School in Nantes and the team leader of “Dyslipidemia and Lipotoxicity” team at INSERM U1087, Nantes, France. Since 2015, he is the director of l’institut du thorax, a high qualified public center devoted to patient care, research and training in cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic diseases. He received his PhD in Endocrinology and Cellular Interactions from the University of Paris and completed his post-doctoral training at the Institut Pasteur de Lille on the metabolic function of the bile acid nuclear receptor FXR.

Pr Cariou is interested in the function of PCSK9 and in pharmacological management of type 2 diabetes and NASH. He is a core member of a TransAtlantic Network of Excellence on PCSK9 funded by the Fondation Leducq (2014-2019) and the coordinator of RHU project CHOPIN (Cholesterol Personalized Innovation), aiming at identifying new therapeutic targets and biomarkers for hypercholesterolemia management.

He has authored more than 260 original publications in the area of diabetes, lipidology and molecular biology and is a principal investigator in several clinical trials in Diabetology, Lipidology and Endocrinology.

Danilo Norata

MilanoItaly

Giuseppe Danilo Norata, Prof, PhD, is Full Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Milan, Italy, and is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the William Harvey Research Institute, Barts and The London School of Medicine & Dentistry Queen Mary University, London, UK. He graduated in 1996 in Pharmacy, received the PhD in Experimental Medicine at the University of Siena in 2002 and was a post-doc from 2002 to 2004 at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. His research activity is devoted to the investigation of molecular mechanisms involved in vascular and cardiometabolic diseases and their connection with immunometabolism from a translational perspective. He coordinates the activities at the Laboratory of Lipoproteins, Atherosclerosis and Immunity at the Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences in Milan and those of the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Genetics and Genomics at the Center for The Study of Atherosclerosis at the Bassini Hospital. He published more than 16 papers in the field of cardiovascular and immunometabolic diseases and participated as speaker and/or chairmen in several national and international meetings. Giuseppe Danilo Norata is Academic Editor of PLOS ONE and is a member of the Editorial Board of Nutrition Metabolism and Cardiovascular Disease. He is a member of the European Lipoprotein Club Organizing Committee, of the Faculty of the International Atherosclerosis Research School and of the European Working Group on Immunometabolism.

Bart van de Sluis

GroningenThe Netherlands

Prof. dr. Bart van de Sluis graduated in Biology from the Utrecht University, the Netherlands. In 1998, he was appointed as a PhD student at the Department of Human Genetics at the Utrecht University, the Netherlands, under the supervision of Prof. Cisca Wijmenga. He received his PhD degree (cum laude, highest distinction in the Netherlands) in 2002 on the basis of the identification of a copper toxicosis gene in Bedlington terriers. As a postdoctoral fellow, he continued his scientific career in the lab of Dr. Paul Liu at the Genetics and Molecular Biology Branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NIH, Bethesda, USA). He worked on a project to identify novel players in leukemogenesis and hematopoiesis. Mid-2004, he returned back to Utrecht as a post-doc on a joined project of Dr. L. Klomp and Prof. C. Wijmenga. In March 2008, Prof. dr. van de Sluis moved to Groningen to set up his own research group to better understand how the trafficking of receptors (including members of the LDLR family) in the cell is regulated, and how inflammation is kept under control, with the focus on the NF-kB signaling pathway. He is using cellular and mouse models to study these different processes in great detail. In addition, Prof. dr. van de Sluis runs a mouse transgenic mouse facility at the RUG/UMCG to generate new mouse models using different approaches, such as the CRISPR/Cas methodology. In the recent years, he is awarded with several grants, including a Dutch NWO-ALW grant, ITN trainingsnetwork grant and participates as a PI in a Dutch and European consortium.

Marina Cuchel

PhiladelphiaUSA

Dr. Cuchel is a Research Associate Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She is a translational scientist with a longstanding research interest in rare disorders of lipoprotein metabolism and the development of novel therapeutic strategies. Her research has had a significant impact on the development and regulatory approval of novel treatments for homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia as well as advancing our understanding of the role of genes affecting lipid and lipoprotein metabolism in human pathophysiology. In addition to the development of novel therapeutic approaches and the investigation of their mechanism of action, she has also investigated the association of cholesterol efflux capacity with atherosclerosis and led the development of a method to assess reverse cholesterol transport in humans that has been extensively validated in animal models.

Giorgio Sesti

RomaItaly

Giorgio Sesti is Full Professor of Internal Medicine, and Head of the Division of Internal Medicine at Sapienza University of Rome. Dr. Sesti received his medical degree with honours from the University of Rome La Sapienza Medical School and his Endocrinology Specialty Degree from the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
Dr. Sesti has authored or co-authored more than 330 publications in peer-reviewed journals with a cumulative impact factor of 2466 and a publication record of 23577 citations and a Hirsch (h) factor of 75. His research focus is in the area of metabolic diseases and related complications. He was awarded the Schering Award from Italian Endocrine Society for investigator under 40 years in 1999, the SID-Alcmeone Award, the Italian Diabetes Society’s highest scientific award for Investigator under 45 years which recognizes outstanding scientific achievement in the field of diabetes in 2002, the SID-Celso Medal for Scientific Achievement Award, the Italian Diabetes Society’s highest scientific award for Investigator who has made significant, long-term contributions to diabetes research, education and awareness in 2010.
Dr Sesti has served the Italian Diabetes Society as President from 2016 to 2018, and is currently the President of the Italian Society of Internal Medicine.

Michael Roden

DüsseldorfGermany

Dr. Michael Roden is Chair/Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases as well as Director of the Department of Endocrinology&Diabetology, Heinrich-Heine University, University Hospital Düsseldorf, and CEO of the German Diabetes Center (DDZ). He was trained at University Vienna and Yale University. His translational research addresses insulin resistance and energy metabolism, specifically using noninvasive technologies, as well as diabetes and its comorbidities, e.g. fatty liver disease. He has published 600+ peer-reviewed papers, received several awards (e.g. Oskar-Minkowski Prize, G. B. Morgagni Gold Medal, Paul-Langerhans Medal) and holds honorary doctorates of the Universities of Athens and Belgrade. Prof. Roden was President of the Central European Diabetes Association, the Austrian Diabetes Association and currently serves as Chairman of the Europ. Federation f.t. Study of Diabetes (EFSD). In 2016, he was appointed by the President of Germany as member of the German Council of Science and Humanities and became head of its Committee Medicine.

Carlo Patrono

RomaItaly

Carlo Patrono, MD is Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the Catholic University School of Medicine in Rome, Italy and at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Patrono’s main research interest is in the study of platelet activation and inhibition in atherothrombosis and colorectal cancer. His research has contributed characterizing the human pharmacology of aspirin as an inhibitor of platelet COX-1, and providing the basis for the development of low-dose aspirin as an antithrombotic agent.
He is an elected member of the Association of American Physicians, Royal College of Physicians, Academia Europaea and Accademia dei Lincei.
He shared with Dr. Garret FitzGerald the 2013 Grand Prix Scientifique, awarded by the Institut de France, for his work on low-dose aspirin.
He is a Section Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Deputy Editor of the European Heart Journal.
Dr. Patrono has published over 250 research articles with over 75,000 citations and an h-index of 110.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oBtc-DMAAAAJ&hl=en

Minna Kaikkonen-Maatta

KuopioFinland

Minna Kaikkonen-Määttä was born in Kiuruvesi, Finland. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Cellular Biology and Physiology from the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, France, in 2002 and Master’s degree in Molecular Biology from University of Jyväskylä, Finland, in 2005. She obtained her PhD in Molecular Medicine under the supervision of Prof. Seppo Ylä-Herttuala in Kuopio in 2008. She did her postdoctoral studies with Prof. Christopher Glass at University of California San Diego where she studied transcriptional gene regulation and enhancer RNAs supported by the Young Investigator Award from Leducq Foundation. She started her own lab in 2015 at the University of Eastern Finland with a focus on gene and cell level understanding of atherosclerosis using state-of-the-art next generation sequencing methods. Currently she is a tenured Associate Professor in Cardiovascular Genomics and a Director of the Single Cell Genomics Core. She has published 80 peer-reviewed articles with ~3800 citations. She has received over 5 million in research funding and is currently supported by the European Research Council Starting Grant and Academy of Finland. She is the President of the Finnish Society of Atherosclerosis and member of the board of SSAR, EVBO, and Membership Engagement Committee of ASHG.

Marie-Luce Bochaton-Piallat

GenevaSwitzerland

Marie-Luce Bochaton-Piallat, PhD, leads a research group at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva where she also teaches cardiovascular pathophysiology. She is chair of the Working Group Atherosclerosis and Vascular Biology of the ESC. She also serves as member of the scientific committee of the Swiss CardioVascular Biology Working Group and section editor of The ESC Textbook of Vascular Biology. Recently she co-edited a spotlight issue on Novel concept for the role of smooth muscle cells in vascular disease in CardioVascular Research.

She has a longstanding experience in the implication of smooth muscle cell heterogeneity in atherosclerosis. She is currently investigating the role of S100A4 in the phenotypic modulation of intimal smooth muscle cells in vitro and in vivo. Since 2002 she receives continuous support from the Swiss National Science Foundation for her research. Her h-index is 37.

Katey Rayner

OttawaCanada

Katey Rayner is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and the Assistant Dean of Research in the Faculty of Medicine in Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Rayner’s research program focuses how inflammation underlies common diseases like coronary artery disease, obesity and dementia. Her lab is trying to understand the molecular signals that cause inappropriate activation of the immune system and how we can use this understanding to either better diagnose/identify patients at risk of disease, or to better treat this excess inflammation directly to lower risk of disease.

Dr. Rayner has been recognized with awards such as the Joseph A Vita Award (American Heart Association), Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences Young Investigator Award, and is a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada. Dr. Rayner’s research is currently funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the European Cardiovascular Research Network.

Martin Bennett

CambridgeUnited Kingdom

Heart Foundation Chair of Cardiovascular Sciences at the University of Cambridge, with Honorary Consultant Cardiologist positions at Addenbrooke’s and Papworth Hospitals. Professor Bennett directs the BHF Cambridge Centre for Research Excellence and the Cambridge Cardiovascular Interdisciplinary Research Centre. His major research interest is the vascular biology of atherosclerosis and his clinical research programme examines the ability of invasive and non-invasive coronary artery imaging to identify vulnerable plaques, focussing particularly on VH-IVUS and OCT. His research combines clinical medicine, imaging and engineering to predict patient events, in time for prevention.

Jose Javier Fuster

MadridSpain

José Fuster is Assistant Professor and Group Leader at the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) in Madrid (Spain). Previously, he completed postdoctoral training at Boston University School of Medicine in the USA and held faculty positions at Boston University (2015-2018) and the University of Virginia (2018). At CNIC he leads a research group focused on the investigation of the interplay between aging, hematopoiesis and cardiovascular disease, with a particular interest in the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis and heart failure. He is considered a leading expert in the role of age-related clonal hematopoiesis in cardiovascular disease and he actively collaborates on this topic with several international research groups. His work on this topic has been published in prestigious journals, including research articles in Science, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Cell Reports. Among other awards, he has been awarded the Young Investigator Award of the European Atherosclerosis Society.

Steve Nicholls

MelbourneAustralia

Steve Nicholls is Director of Monash Heart and Professor of Cardiology and Inaugural Director of the Victorian Heart Institute at Monash University. He is a preventive cardiologist with research interests in the biological mechanisms linking cardiometabolic risk factors to atherosclerosis, plaque imaging and leadership of clinical trials of novel cardioprotective strategies. He is President-elect of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, President of the Australian Atherosclerosis Society, Founding Chair of the Asia Pacific Cardiometabolic Consortium and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Michael Blaha

BaltimoreUSA

Dr. Michael J. Blaha MD MPH (Professor of Cardiology and Epidemiology) is the Director of Clinical Research for the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease.

Dr. Blaha has published over 500 scientific articles, with a focus on appropriate use of tests and new therapies in the prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. He is a standing member of the Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drug Advisory Committee (EMDAC) for the FDA. He has received multiple grant awards from the National Institutes of Health, FDA, American Heart Association, Amgen Foundation, Aetna Foundation, Novo Nordisk, and Bayer.

In 2018, Dr. Blaha received the Dr. Fred Brancati award at Johns Hopkins for excellence in mentoring. He has mentored over 30 trainees, many of which have gone on to hold prominent academic appointments.

Clinically, he practices as a preventive cardiologist and in the interpretation of cardiac CT. His clinic specializes in patients with advanced subclinical atherosclerosis, and the focused use of an array of lifestyle and pharmacotherapies to mitigate that risk.

Sekar Kathiresan

CambridgeUSA

Dr. Sekar Kathiresan is co-founder and CEO of Verve Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new approach to the care of cardiovascular disease, transforming treatment from chronic management to single-course gene editing medicines. Dr. Kathiresan is a cardiologist and scientist who has focused his career on understanding the inherited basis for heart attack and leveraging those insights to improve the care of cardiovascular disease. Based on his groundbreaking discoveries in human genetic mutations that confer resistance to cardiovascular disease, Dr. Kathiresan co-founded Verve Therapeutics with a vision to create a pipeline of single-course, gene editing therapies focused on addressing the root causes of this highly prevalent and life-threatening disease. Verve is advancing two initial programs that target PCSK9 and ANGPTL3, respectively – genes that have been extensively validated by Dr. Kathiresan and others as targets for lowering blood lipids, such as low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.

Prior to joining Verve, Dr. Kathiresan’s roles included director of the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine, director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad Institute and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kathiresan’s research laboratory focused on understanding the inherited basis for blood lipids and myocardial infarction. For his research contributions, he has been recognized by the AHA with its highest scientific honor – a Distinguished Scientist Award and by the ASHG with the 2018 Curt Stern Award.

Dr. Kathiresan graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology at MGH and his postdoctoral research training in human genetics at the Framingham Heart Study and the Broad Institute.