Peter Carmeliet

At a glance

• Peter Carmeliet (Leuven, 1959) is a Belgian physician and full professor at KU Leuven, where he leads research on blood vessels and cell metabolism within VIB.
• After qualifying as a doctor in 1984, he worked at the University of Maryland, Harvard Medical School and MIT’s Whitehead Institute, among others, and earned his PhD in Leuven in 1989.
• He is best known for his work on angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels, and on growth factors such as VEGF and PlGF. With Désiré Collen he worked on a PlGF inhibitor designed to reduce the blood supply to tumours.
• Later his lab, including Katrien De Bock, showed in Cell (2013) that the cells lining blood vessels rely heavily on glycolysis, and that blocking it slows the growth of new vessels.
• His awards include the Francqui Prize (2002), the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine (2010) and the Heineken Prize for Medicine (2018). In 2015 he was ennobled with the title of baron.
• For longevity, his work matters because healthy blood vessels supply every organ with oxygen and nutrients, and because vessel growth plays a role in cancer and eye disease.
• Takeaway: regular endurance training stimulates new capillaries in your muscles, a natural and healthy form of vessel growth.