Mark P. de Caestecker, MBBS, PhD, runs an NIH-funded lab-based research program in the Division of Nephrology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His lab is currently using genetic models in mice and patient derived IPS cells to evaluate effect of inherited mutations in the BMP type 2 receptor, BMPR2, on pulmonary vascular cell function, and using these approaches to evaluate the use of mutation-specific therapies to improve pulmonary vascular function in patients with heritable forms of pulmonary hypertension.
He trained as a physician-scientist at Cambridge University, University College London, and Manchester University, and completed his specialist training in General Internal Medicine and Nephrology at Manchester Royal Infirmary in England. In 1995 Dr. de Caestecker was awarded a Wellcome Trust Training Fellowship to work as a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Anita Roberts at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2000 he was recruited as junior faculty to the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt and was promoted with tenure in 2009. He provides in-patient care in Internal Medicine and Nephrology at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Nashville, and is extensively involved in graduate student teaching through the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and as Director of the HHMI Certificate Program in Molecular Medicine at Vanderbilt.