Bart Vanhaesebroeck - Deputy Chair

Bart Vanhaesebroeck is Professor in Cell Signalling at Barts & the London Medical School, UK, where he heads the Centre for Cell Signalling at the Institute of Cancer.

Bart gained a Masters degree (1985) in Physiology/Biochemistry and a PhD (1990) in Molecular Biology at Ghent University, Belgium. Following postdoctoral work in Ghent, and a brief stay at the University of Padova, Italy, he started postdoctoral work at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, London (1993), working on PI 3-kinases. He subsequently became Assistant (2000) and Associate (2006) Member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, and Lecturer (2000) and Professor (2005) at the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at University College London. In 2007, he moved to Barts and the London to set up the new Centre for Cell Signalling.

Bart's research efforts focus on understanding the roles of PI 3-kinase (PI3K) signalling enzymes in normal physiology and disease. He cloned the p110δ isoform of PI3K (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.USA 1997:94,4330), revealed p110δ-selective functions in cells (Nature Cell Biol. 1999:1,69; Cancer Res. 2003:63,1667) and generated mouse models to investigate the in vivo function of this enzyme. Together with his colleagues, he proposed the now universally accepted classification and nomenclature of the PI3Ks (Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London 1996:351,217; Trends Biochem.Sci. 1997:22,267).

His team pioneered the use of so-called 'kinase knockin' mice in which the active site carries a mutation in an ATP-binding amino acid residue, leading to inactivation of the kinase. These provide a more adequate physiological model for the effects of small molecule kinase inhibitors than classical gene knockout approaches (Cell 2004:118,274; Trends Biochem. Sci. 2005:30,194). Our recent studies have revealed key functions for p110δ PI3K in adaptive immunity (Science 2002:297,1031), allergy (Nature 2004:431,1007) and leukaemia (Oncogene 2006:25,6648; Cancer Res. 2009:69,1027). In collaboration with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, this work was successfully incorporated into the drug development programme of PIramed (now acquired by Roche).

Application of the mouse knockin strategy has allowed us to uncover the first physiological roles of the p110α isoform of PI3K (Nature 2006:441,366; Nature 2008:29,453) and p110β (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.USA 2008:105,8292) isoforms of PI3K.

Together with Pedro Cutillas in the Centre for Cell Signalling, we are also developing novel methodologies to monitor the amount and activation of signal transduction enzymes, with focus on the PI3K pathway (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2006:103,8959; Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2007:104,7809).

Bart has served on various grant committees, and is a Deputy Chair of the Biochemical Journal. He previously held consultancy positions for Serono (Geneva) and PIramed, and is currently a member of the SAB of Intellikine, San Diego. He is an elected member of EMBO.