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Professor Jo De Mey
Emeritus Professor of Vascular Pharmacology,
Maastricht University
Abstract:
With obesity, therapy-resistant hypertension and heart failure rising in the human population, recording of acute endothelium-dependent vasomotor responses of blood vessels from animals no longer suffices in target identification and lead finding for novel cardiovascular therapies. Challenges and opportunities will be discussed that may help remedy this. 1) Adding neuroeffector mechanisms and perivascular adipose tissue to studies of cell-cell communication in the vessel wall. 2) Focus on chronic human rather than acute rodent vascular pharmacology. 3) The use of advanced microscopy techniques to quantify drug effects on (a) vascular structure (not only tone) in experimental models and biopsies from patients and (b) the life cycle of drug-receptor complexes. 4) Application of novel drug concepts such as bitopic agonists, biased agonists and allosteric modulators. 5) From “one size fits all” to precision medicine. Ideally these flourish in a (virtual) multidisciplinary environment where junior and senior vascular pharmacologists profit from input and feedback from basic and applied aspects of the academic, clinical and pharmaceutical industry aspects of the drug-discovery and drug-development chains. In this respect, I will share personal experiences with the “Research Schools” and “Public-Private Partnerships” in the Netherlands and with the “Danish Cardiovascular Academy”. In such environments, hypotheses, resources, tools and insights can be shared and application of innovative learning techniques become far more effective than classical teaching.
Bio:
Professor Jo De Mey is Emeritus Professor of Vascular Pharmacology at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and received post-doctoral NIH research fellowships at the University of California, Davis, USA. He then pursued his scientific career in pharmaceutical industry, becoming the Head of the Department of Cardiovascular Research, at Monsanto / GD Searle Belgium and USA. He returned to academia as Assistant- and then Associate Professor at the Department of Pharmacology of Maastricht University, the Netherlands, and was awarded the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) Established Investigatorship at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht. During his professorship at Maastricht University, he also served to be the Dean of the School of Life Sciences at the Transnational University of Limburg, Head of Cardiovascular Research of the public-private partnership TOP Institute Pharma of the Netherlands, Honorary Professor at Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy at the University of Hong Kong, Professor of Medical Molecular Pharmacology at University of Southern Denmark and Consultant of the Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery of the Odense University Hospital in Denmark. His main research interests are on cell-cell communication, endothelial (dys)function, arterial remodeling in hypertension and diabetes, molecular pharmacology of 7 transmembrane receptors and vascular pharmacology in relation to pharmacotherapy of cardiovascular diseases. He has over 200 original peer-reviewed publications, with H index of 44 and over 7500 citations, and has mentored 43 postgraduate students and 12 postdoctoral fellows. He also provided editorial and reviewer services to many international peer-reviewed journals including Acta Physiologica; Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology; British Journal of Pharmacology; and Circulation Research.
Details
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| Venue: |
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Mrs. Chen Yang Foo Oi Telemedicine Centre,
2/F, Room A2-08,
William M.W. Mong Block
For registration, please click link
For enquiries, please contact Ms Zoe Li at zoekli@hku.hk.
All are welcome
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