Professor of Medicine
Department of Vascular Medicine Academic Medical Center,
University of Amsterdam
John J.P. Kastelein is Professor of Medicine at the Department of Vascular Medicine at the Academic Medical Center (AMC) of the University of Amsterdam, where he holds the Strategic Chair of Genetics of Cardiovascular Disease. Professor Kastelein has published over 1320 research papers in peer reviewed journals, including Nature Genetics, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and Circulation and has a Hirsch index of 122 in January 2020. His citations reached over 680 in 2020 and in total over 74800.
John J.P. Kastelein is currently the CSO of New Amsterdam Pharma, a company developing Obicetrapib, a CETP inhibitor,that lowers LDL-cholesterol ands apoB and reduces CV risk . He is also the acting chief medical officer (CMO) of Statin Biotechnology Inc., a company developing a monoclonal antibody (Mab) against apolipoprotein CIII and he holds a Board position in North Sea Therapeutics, a company involved in NASH and cardiometabolic therapeutics. Dr. Kastelein is chief executive officer (CEO) of the Vascular Resesarch Network (VRN), a site maintenance organization comprising over 50 hospitals in the Netherlands, involved in clinical trials for cardiometabolic disease. Next to these functions, Dr. Kastelein is key advisor to a number of biotech and pharmaceutical companies. For a comprehensive list, see below.
He received his medical degree in Amsterdam in 1980 where he subsequently received specialty training in internal medicine. Then, between 1986 and 1988, he was trained in medical genetics, lipidology and molecular biology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver under the guidance of Prof. Dr. M.R. Hayden. In 1997 and 1998 he served a visiting Professorship at the Center for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Upon his return to the Netherlands, he was awarded a doctorate (Cum Laude) and in 1989 he founded the Lipid Research Clinic at the Academic Medical Center, AMC) in Amsterdam, which is currently serving as a tertiary referral centre and has become part of the department of Vascular Medicine of the University of Amsterdam.
An important concept in Dr. Kastelein’s research career, developed initially at the University of British Columbia, by his mentor Dr. Hayden, and subsequently transformed into practice at the AMC in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is the “extreme genetics” approach. This approach teaches that the study of rare human disorders that are associated with premature coronary disease have broader relevance for the understanding of the etiology of heart disease in general and will yield therapeutic targets that are valid for all patients.
This approach has been very successful, in so far that Familial Hypercholesterolemia is now internationally recognized as the paradigm for the relationship between LDL-C and heart disease, a relationship substantiated by at least 50 peer reviewed manuscripts and 10 postdoctoral theses in Dr. Kastelein’s curriculum vitae.
The same “extreme genetics” concept was applied to disorders of HDL-C and elevated triglycerides and lead to the discovery of the cholesterol efflux protein ABCA1 and later to gene therapy for lipoprotein lipase deficiency. These two innovative contributions to science have lead to important breakthroughs in the field of drug development for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (development of ABCA1 agonists) and in the area of gene therapy for hereditary disorders such as LPL deficiency, haemophilia, LCAT deficiency, homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia and others
In 1995, Dr. Kastelein was one of the initiators of a foundation for the active identification of patients with classical familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) in the Netherlands (StoeH). Since its inception, the StoeH has found over 25.000 individuals for whom a molecular diagnosis of FH could be made. The subsequent improvement of the treatment of these FH patients has saved many lives, as published in Lancet in 2001 and in the British Medical Journal in 2008.