Frontiers in Pharmaceutical Sciences Lecture Series - No. 209

Topic: Endothelial function and dysfunction

Speaker: Prof. Paul M. Vanhoutte (Chair Professor, Department of Pharmacology & Pharmacy, University of Hong Kong)

Chair: Prof. Liu Peiqing (School of Pharmaceutical Science, SYSU)

Time: 14:00 PM, Monday, March 9, 2015

Venue: 125 Lecture Hall, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, East Campus, SYSU

Introduction to the speaker:

    Dr. Paul M. Vanhoutte was born in 1940 in Belgium, where he obtained his degrees at the University of Gent (B.S., M.S., and M.D.) and the University of Antwerpen (equivalent to Ph.D.). He received his postdoctoral training at the University of Gent and at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN, USA). His academic career started at the University of Gent (Assistant, 1969-1971), followed by the Mayo Clinic (Research Associate, 1972-1973), the University of Antwerpen (Belgium), from Associate Professor to full Professor and Head of the Department of Pharmacology, 1973-1981), again the Mayo Clinic (Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology, 1981-1989) and Baylor College of Medicine (Houston TX, USA, Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology and Physiology, and Director Center for Experimental Therapeutics, 1989-1995). From 1992 to 2002, Dr. Vanhoutte was Vice-President R&D, and Director of Discovery Research at the Institut de Recherches Internationales Servier, in Courbevoie (Paris, France). During his tenure as Director of Discovery Research at Servier, he supervised the discovery and preclinical development of drugs designed for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, central nervous system disorders, cancer and osteoarthritis. From 2003 to 2006 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor and Director of the BioPharmaceutical Development Centre, at the University of Hong Kong. From 2006 to 2011 he was the Head of the Department of Pharmacology. He currently is Chair Professor in the same department. He has been Visiting Professor at the National University of Rwanda (1967), the Polish Academy of Sciences (1979) and King Saud University (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), He currently is Honorary Professor at the Peking Union Medical College (Beijing), the Institute of Materia Medica of Beijing, the Ocean University of Qingdao, the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica. He also is Visiting Professor and International Scientific Advisor at the Peking University Health Sciences Center and Visiting Professor at the University of South Denmark, the University of Strasbourg (France), the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur), Chonbuk National University in Jeonju (South-Korea) and the University of Zurich (Switzerland). Dr. Vanhoutte is member of the Academia Europea, the Academie Nationale de Pharmacie [Paris] and the Belgian Academy of Medicine, and an honorary member of the Brazilian Academy of Medicine. He is member of the American Association of Physicians, the American Society of Physiology, the American Heart Association (fellow), the American Society for Clinical Investigation (Emeritus), the American College of Cardiology (fellow), the American College of Angiology (fellow), the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the Belgian Society for Physiology and Pharmacology, the British Pharmacological Society (Honorary Fellow), the French Pharmacological Society and the European Society of Cardiology (fellow). He is the Past-President of the Hong Kong Pharmacology Society. Dr. Vanhoutte is the founder and Past-President of the Serotonin Club and of the Asian Society of Vascular Biology. He is honorary member of the Physiological Society (London), the Chinese Pharmacological Society, the German Society of Angiology and the Société Française de Cardiologie. From 1989 to 2007, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology. He has been Associate Editor of the American Journal of Physiology (Heart and Circulatory Physiology), of News in Physiological Sciences, and of the Journal of Vascular Medicine and Biology. He is or has been member of the Editorial Board of many scientific journals (e.g. Circulation, Circulation Research, Hypertension, Journal of Hypertension, American Journal of Physiology, Acta Sinica Pharmacologica, Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics). He has been member, and chairman, of the Program Project Review Committee of the National Heart Blood and Lung Institute of the NIH (Bethesda, MD, USA). He chaired the IUPHAR Committee for Receptor Nomenclature from 1989 to 1998. He was Secretary General of the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) from 1998 to 2002, and President of the Union from 2002 to 2006. Dr. Vanhoutte has written three theses. He has co-authored or edited 36 books. He has published 654 original research papers, and 562 editorials, reviews or chapters in books. His major scientific contribution has been to appreciate and analyse the importance of endothelial cells in the control of the underlying vascular smooth muscle in vascular health and disease, and to highlight the complexity of that regulation. Dr. Vanhoutte has received the Doctor Honoris Causa degree of the University of Gent (Belgium) in 2001, from the Universities of Antwerp (Belgium), Montreal (Canada) and Zurich (Switzerland) in 2003, from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia) in 2005, from the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (France) in 2006, from the Gr. T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Iasi (Romania) in 2009 and from Monash University (Australia) in 2012. Dr. Vanhoutte is a Highly Cited Researcher (ISI) in three categories: Biology & Chemistry, Pharmacology, and Clinical Medicine. His h-index is 124.

All are welcome to the lecture!