We have assembled an international SAB comprising prestigious colleagues with expertise covering our fields of activities. Our SAB members are presented below.
Peter Libby is a cardiovascular specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and holds the Mallinckrodt Professorship of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He directed Cardiovascular Medicine at BWH from 1998 – 2014. His areas of clinical expertise include general and preventive cardiology. His current major research focus is the role of inflammation in vascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. Dr. Libby has a particular devotion to clinical translation. He instigated and helped to lead the large scale Canakinumab Anti-Inflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Trial that provided clinical validation of the role of inflammation in atherosclerosis.
Steffen Massberg is Professor of Cardiology and Director of the Department of Cardiology at the University Clinic Munich, Ludwig-Maximilians University in Germany. His basic science research interests encompass stem-cell biology, platelet biology, mechanisms of arterial and venous thrombosis, immune-cell migration, immune-cell/coagulation crosstalk and bio-imaging.
Dianna M. Milewicz is the President George H.W. Bush Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, Director of the Division of Medical Genetics and Vice-Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) McGovern Medical School. She forged a career in translational studies focused on genetic predisposition to vascular diseases. She has received numerous honors and awards for her research.
Christophe Bureau holds a Ph.D in quantum physics and a Master of Science in Physical Chemistry from the Ecole Normale Superieure (France) and the Université Paris Cité. He is Vice-President Strategic Innovation at Sinomed, a leading supplier of medical devices in interventional cardiology and neurology, based in Tianjin, China. He is the inventor of the electrografting coating technology (eG™) used in the BuMA, HT Supreme and NOVA drug eluting stents (implanted in more than 1 million patients). For the past 25 years, he has worked in Innovation, turning ideas into invoices in various industries such as medical devices, pharmaceutical primary packaging, semiconductors, the automotive industry and nanoprinting. He has created and funded 5 startup companies.
Nicola Mutch is currently a Reader at the University of Aberdeen, Secretary of the British Society of Haemostasis & Thrombosis (BSHT), President of the International Society of Fibrinolysis and Proteolysis (ISFP) and Executive Chair of the Scientific and Standardisation Subcommittees of the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH). Her research takes a global approach to study the cross-talk between hemostatic systems, with the goal of understanding the normal biological processes that regulate these complex pathways and perturbations during disease.
Christoph Alexiou leads the Section of Experimental Oncology and Nanomedicine at the University Hospital of Erlangen, Germany, focusing on drug delivery in oncology and promising potential applications in cardiovascular, regenerative medicine and imaging using magnetic nanoparticles. Since 2009 he owns the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Foundation-Professorship for Nanomedicine at the University Hospital Erlangen. The aim of his research focuses on the translation of Magnetic Drug Targeting into human trials.
Karen Vanhoorelbeke is Professor at KU Leuven, Kortrijk, Belgium and she is chairman of the Interdisciplinary Research Facility. Her fundamental research focuses on the molecular mechanisms by which the hemostatic proteins contribute to health and disease. She has strong expertise in monoclonal antibody development. She is also co-founder of PharmAbs (www.pharmabs.org), an innovation, incubation and valorization platform at KU Leuven.
Elisabeth Engel is Associate Professor at Technical University of Catalonia and she is leading the Group of Biomaterials for Regenerative Therapies at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia. Her research interests include the preparation and design of materials and scaffolds for in vitro and in vivo fundamental studies, and a further focus is the provision of useful tools to assess mechanisms that govern cell behavior in regenerative medicine.
Franck Bengel is Professor and Director of the Nuclear Medicine department at the Hannover Medical School, Germany. His main research focus is the application of noninvasive imaging techniques for the assessment of functional mechanisms in the body, especially in the cardiovascular system. He advanced nuclear imaging techniques targeting blood flow, metabolism and autonomic nervous system of the heart. He also introduced novel techniques for imaging gene expression and tracking stem cells in the heart. Rapid translation of novel tests from research to patient care is at the center of his work, in order to facilitate early disease detection and to refine the choice of therapy.
Roxana Mehran is Professor of Medicine and Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Research and Clinical Trials at the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA. She is internationally recognized for her work as a clinical trial specialist with complex data analyses and outcomes research within the field of interventional cardiology and for her experience and expertise in working with regulatory agencies to conduct clinical trials. Her research interests expand from mechanisms of restenosis to treatment and prevention of acute kidney injury in cardiac patients, as well as advancing treatments for acute coronary syndromes and acute myocardial infarction.