Prof. Peter Carmeliet's laboratory is focusing on unraveling the molecular and cellular basis of the formation of blood vessels (angiogenesis) in health and disease, and in particular the role of vascular heterogeneity and vascular metabolism herein. Abnormal blood vessel growth, excessive or insufficient, contributes to multiple disorders, including cancer, age-related blindness, stroke, diabetes, etc. Our ambition is to identify novel therapeutic pro- or anti-angiogenic treatments.
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Prof Carmeliet is the Co-PI of the听Biomedical Science Discovery (BISDI) Program, a collaboration between听Khalifa University and Leuven University/VIB,听an initiative to champion biomedical life science research and drive drug development innovation in Abu Dhabi. 听A formidable challenge is that most basic research results are presently not translated into drug development, and 鈥渄ie in the Valley of Death鈥� between academia and pharma. We developed new artificial intelligence tools to improve target discovery by predicting the function of mystery genes without known function; we also developed novel lipid nanoparticle-based RNA silencing tools to revolutionize target validation, which offers promising RNA therapeutics for vascular disorders.听We听will use these innovative tools to collaboratively bridge the Valley of Death for the development of novel therapeutic avenues for the cardiovascular complications in diabetes and for alternative endothelial cell based immunotherapy for cancer.
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Prof Carmeliet, MD 1984, PhD 1989 (KU Leuven) is head of the Laboratory of Angiogenesis and听Vascular Metabolism and former director of the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology. He performed a postdoc at the Whitehead Institute, MIT Cambridge USA. In 1992 he started his own research group, focusing on how blood vessels grow (angiogenesis) in health and disease. He published 725 papers (193,700听citations, h-index听209). He currently studies how endothelial cells (EC) change their metabolism during vascular branching, exploring the therapeutic potential of targeting EC metabolism for anti-angiogenic strategies. The role of several key metabolic targets in EC biology and angiogenesis in vivo is under investigation. He has won various awards, including the Francqui Prize in Biological and Medical Sciences (2002), the Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine (2010) and the Heineken Prize for Medicine (2018). In 2015 King Filip of Belgium granted him the Noble title of 鈥楤aron鈥�. In April 2021 he was elected as an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
