Peter Carmeliet

Peter Carmeliet, MD 1984, PhD 1989 (KU Leuven) is head of the Laboratory of Angiogenesis and 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 (94,299 citations, h-index 146).

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.

Peter 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 ‘Baron’. In April 2021 he was elected as an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.