Paul M. Vanhoutte#

Obituary, The Physiological Society
Obituary, J Physiol 597.24 (2019) pp 5731–5737
Obituary, Monash University
Obituary, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine and Tohoku University Hospital

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Biography#

Long CV

Dr. Paul M. Vanhoutte was born in 1940 in Belgium, where he obtained his degrees at the University of Gent (B.S., M.S., and M.D.) and the University of Antwerpen (equivalent to Ph.D.). He received his postdoctoral training at the University of Gent and at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN, USA).

His academic career started at the University of Gent (Assistant, 1969-1971), followed by the Mayo Clinic (Research Associate, 1972-1973), the University of Antwerpen (Belgium), from Associate Professor to full Professor and Head of the Department of Pharmacology, 1973-1981), again the Mayo Clinic (Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology, 1981-1989) and Baylor College of Medicine (Houston TX, USA, Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology and Physiology, and Director Center for Experimental Therapeutics, 1989-1995). From 1992 to 2002, Dr. Vanhoutte was Vice-President R&D, and Director of Discovery Research at the Institut de Recherches Internationales Servier, in Courbevoie (Paris, France).

During his tenure as Director of Discovery Research at Servier, he supervised the discovery and preclinical development of drugs designed for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, central nervous system disorders, cancer and osteoarthritis. He is currently is the Head of the Department of Pharmacology, and Director of the BioPharmaceutical Development Centre, at the University of Hong Kong. He has been Visiting Professor at the National University of Rwanda (1967), and the Polish Academy of Sciences (1979). He currently is Honorary Professor at the Peking Union Medical College (Beijing), the Institute of Materia Medica of Beijing, the Ocean University of Qingdao, the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica. He also is Visiting Professor and International Scientific Advisor at the Peking University Health Sciences Center. He is also Visiting Professor at the University of South Denmark, the University of Strasbourg (France), the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and Chonbuk National University (Korea). Dr. Vanhoutte is member of the Academia Europea and the Belgian Academy of Medicine, and an honorary member of the Brazilian Academy of Medicine. He is member of the American Association of Physicians, the American Society of Physiology, the American Heart Association(fellow), the American Society for Clinical Investigation (Emeritus), the American College of Cardiology (fellow), the American College of Angiology (fellow), the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the Belgian Society for Physiology and Pharmacology, the British Pharmacological Society (honorary fellow), the French Pharmacological Society, the European Society of Cardiology(fellow),the European Society for Clinical Investigation, the International Society of Hypertension, the Inter-American Society of Hypertension, and the Society for Vascular Medicine and Biology (fellow). Dr. Vanhoutte is the founder, past-President and member of the Serotonin Club. He is honorary member of the Physiological Society (London), the Chinese Pharmacological Society, the German Society of Angiology and the Société Française de Cardiologie.

From 1989 to 2007, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology. He has been Associate Editor of the American Journal of Physiology (Heart and Circulatory Physiology), of News in Physiological Sciences, and of the Journal of Vascular Medicine and Biology. He is or has been member of the Editorial Board of many scientific journals (e.g. Circulation, Circulation Research, Hypertension, Journal of Hypertension, American Journal of Physiology, Acta Sinica Pharmacologica, Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics).

He has been member, and chairman, of the Program Project Review Committee of the National Heart Blood and Lung Institute of the NIH (Bethesda, MD, USA). He chaired the IUPHAR Committee for Receptor Nomenclature from 1989 to 1998. He was Secretary General of the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) from 1998 to 2002, and President of the Union from 2002 to 2006.

Dr. Vanhoutte has written three theses. He has co-authored or edited 35 books. He has published 568 original research papers, and 514 editorials, reviews or chapters in books.

His major scientific contribution has been to appreciate and analyse the importance of endothelial cells in the control of the underlying vascular smooth muscle in health and disease, and to highlight the complexity of that regulation.

Dr. Vanhoutte has received the Doctor Honoris Causa degree of the University of Gent (Belgium) in 2001, from the Universities of Antwerp (Belgium), Montreal (Canada) and Zurich (Switzerland) in 2003, from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia) in 2005, from the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (France) in 2006 and from the Gr. T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Iasi (Romania) in 2009. Dr. Vanhoutte is a Highly Cited Researcher (ISI) in three categories: Biology & Chemistry, Pharmacology, and Clinical Medicine.
His current h-index is 102.