Carlos Fernández-Hernando, PhD, Anthony N. Brady Professor of Comparative Medicine and Pathology, was appointed as Director of the Vascular Biology & Therapeutics Program at Yale School of Medicine effective February 1.
The Vascular Biology & Therapeutic Program combines new discoveries in vascular biology with closely linked clinical programs in medicine and surgery to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disorders. The program was established in 2000 to focus is on discovering new mechanisms that regulate blood vessel function and inflammation to gain insights into cardiovascular-related diseases and in developing endothelial cell-based approaches for tissue revascularization and for engineering synthetic vascularized tissues and organs.
Dr. Fernández-Hernando completed his PhD in biochemistry/molecular biology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain and postdoctoral training at Yale from 2005 to 2009 with William Sessa, PhD, whom he now succeeds as Vascular Biology & Therapeutic Program director. Dr. Fernández-Hernando joined the faculty in 2013 after establishing a laboratory in the Department of Medicine at New York University. Dr. Fernández-Hernando's research combines cell biology, genetics, and mouse models to study lipid metabolism and cardiovascular-related disorders. He focuses on identifying novel mechanisms by which cholesterol metabolism is regulated, assessing the contribution of non-coding RNA in regulating lipid metabolism, and developing novel non-coding RNA-based therapies for cardiovascular disorders. His findings have provided important insights on the regulation of cellular lipid homeostasis and lipoprotein metabolism. He is also a member of the Yale Center for Molecular and Systems Metabolism.
Dr. Fernández-Hernando has authored or co-authored more than 150 research articles, many of them in prominent journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Medicine, Cell Metabolism, Journal of Clinical Investigation and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among others. He has received many awards for his contributions in the field of lipid metabolism and vascular biology including the Irvine Page Young Investigator Award (American Heart Association), Springer Award (North American Vascular Biology Association), David L. Williams Award (Kern Lipid Conference), Established Investigator Award (American Heart Association), Jeffrey M. Hoeg Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis & Vascular Biology Award in Basic Science and Clinical Research (American Heart Association), R35EIA from NHBLI and the Folkman Award in Vascular Biology (North American Vascular Biology Association).