Marc van Bilsen wetenschap / science
Associate professor of molecular physiology. Dr. Van Bilsen studied biology at the University of Leiden, where he graduated in 1982. He received his PhD from Universiteit Maastricht in 1988 on the basis of a thesis on disturbances in phospholipid homeostasis and energy metabolism in the ischemic and reperfused heart. In 1990 he received a NATO-Science Fellowship and a grant from the American Heart Association to work on the regulation of cardiac-specific gene expression at the Division of Molecular Cardiology of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), for two years. After his return to Maastricht in 1992 the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences appointed him Senior Investigator. In 1998 he received the Edmond Hustinx price for Science. In the same year he became Established Investigator of the Netherlands Heart Foundation. His present research interest concerns the molecular mechanisms and pathophysiological significance of metabolic alterations and inflammatory processes in the hypertrophied and failing heart, with special emphasis on the regulatory properties of nuclear hormone receptors, like the Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptors (PPARs), in these processes.