József Balla - Biography#

József Balla is professor of medicine at University of Debrecen, director of the Institute and Clinic of Internal Medicine, head of the Department of Nephrology, and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

In 1984 he earned a general medical degree at the Medical University of Debrecen then completed the residency and fellowship for internal medicine and nephrology. Between 1988 and 1994, he worked as a research fellow at the University of Minnesota in the United States. His research area at that time was the iron-mediated redox damage to cells lining the inner layer of blood vessels, endothelium.

After returning to Hungary he established a Vascular Biology Research Laboratory at the University of Debrecen, which has become an international hub for his research area over the past 30 years. They collaborate with research groups at the universities of Minnesota, Alabama, Lund, Heidelberg, Zurich, Kanazawa, and INSERM-Paris, to name the most important ones.

In the 1990s, his research led to the recognition of hemoglobin stress, and he is credited with describing adaptation to hemoglobin stress in vascular biology based on heme oxygenase 1 and ferritin. Later, in the past 20 years, he discovered 2 regulatory systems in the field of vascular pathophysiology, thus enabling drug development by identifying new therapeutic targets and diagnostic markers.

The main areas of his research are calcification affecting the arteries and heart valves, and development of complicated atherosclerotic lesions which causes vascular narrowing, circulatory disorders in the organs, and heart valve stenosis through the remodeling of blood vessels. The process of mineralization of blood vessels and heart valves is the calcification paradox of human life, with translocation of calcium and phosphate towards the blood vessels.

József Balla's research laboratory has revealed how the transition of resident and infiltrating cells of blood vessels and heart valves - including vascular smooth muscle cells, valvular interstitial cells, mesenchymal stem cells - is regulated into osteoblast (bone cells). They identified H-ferritin/ferrooxidase system as a regulatory hub that controls the calcification of blood vessels and heart valves and designated those as molecular targets. He is credited with recognizing the anti-atherosclerotic effect of hydrogen sulfide gas and describing its molecular mechanism of action and regulation. The discovery of hemoglobin oxidation to ferril and ferryl states with molecular changes and pathological cellular responses within the vasculature by his research group led to better understanding the development of complicated atherosclerotic lesions and identification of novel therapeutic targets.

He has involved undergraduate, PhD students and young colleagues in clinical and scientific work. Among his talented students and colleagues, one won the presidency of the American Society of Nephrology, and another secured a Hungarian Academy of Sciences Momentum Grant.