Steven Nissen, MD, is the Chairman of the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine located on the main campus of Cleveland Clinic.  Prior to this, he served nine years as Vice-Chairman of the Department of Cardiology and five years as Medical Director of the Cleveland Clinic Cardiovascular Coordinating Center, an organization that directs multicenter clinical trials.

Dr. Nissen’s research during the last two decades has focused on the application of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging for the assessment of progression and regression of coronary atherosclerosis.

Contributions to scientific literature include approximately 270 journal articles with a respectable number of manuscripts in NEJM, Circulation, and JAMA, in addition to 60 book chapters and electronic publishings.  In recent years, he has also written on the subject of drug safety and was the author of manuscripts highlighting concerns about the COX-2 inhibitors, muraglitazar and rosiglitazone.

Stephen J. Nicholls, MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine/Surgery), PhD, is Medical Director of Intravascular Ultrasound and Angiography Core Laboratories at Cleveland Clinic and Clinical Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention. Dr. Nicholls is also Associate Director of the Cleveland Clinic Coordinating Center for Clinical Research and Assistant Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. He holds dual faculty appointments in the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine in the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute at Cleveland Clinic, and the Department of Cell Biology in the Learner Research Institute.

He has authored more than 150 original manuscripts, meeting abstracts and book chapters. His current research interests include the functional properties of HDL, the role of inflammation and oxidative stress in atherogenesis and the development of new imaging modalities to assess factors that influence the natural history of atherosclerosis. He plays a lead role in clinical trials that employ intravascular ultrasound to investigate the impact of novel anti-atherosclerotic therapies.

Dr. Ballantyne’s current positions include: Professor of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine; Chief, Section of Atherosclerosis and Vascular Medicine; Director, The Maria and Alando J. Ballantyne, M.D., Atherosclerosis Clinical Research Laboratory; Director, Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, Methodist DeBakey Heart Center; and Co-director, Lipid Metabolism and Atherosclerosis Clinic, The Methodist Hospital.

Dr. Ballantyne's clinical research is the prevention of atherosclerotic vascular disease. This interest includes pharmacological studies to assess the efficacy and benefits of lipid-lowering drug therapy including trials which utilize ultrasound and MRI to examine the effects of lipid-lowering drugs on the progression of atherosclerosis. As the director of The Maria and Alando J. Ballantyne, M.D., Atherosclerosis Clinical Research Laboratory, which serves as the core laboratory for the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, Dr. Ballantyne is studying whether novel biomarkers might be useful in identifying individuals at high risk for cardiovascular disease, the metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Both genomics and proteomics are being used to identify novel molecules that are increased with atherosclerosis and the metabolic syndrome.

Dr. Brewer is currently Director, Washington Cardiovascular Associates, Senior Research Consultant, Lipoprotein and Atherosclerosis Research at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, a division of MedStar Research Institute, in Washington, DC. Prior to joining MedStar, Dr. Brewer was Chief of the Molecular Disease Branch at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, a position he held from 1976 to 2005.

Dr. Brewer is a prominent researcher who has published more than 450 original manuscripts and 75 reviews and book chapters on the subjects of genetic dyslipoproteinemias, lipoprotein metabolism, and atherosclerosis. He was a member of the Board of the National Cholesterol Education Program, which established treatment guidelines for patients with hyperlipidemia in the United States, and has served on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals. He is curent on the editorial board of Clinical Lipidology. Dr. Brewer’s research led to the elucidation of the first published sequences for the human plasma apolipoproteins, the initial determination of the metabolism of the plasma apolipoproteins in normal and hyperlipidemic individuals, as well as the identification of multiple gene defects leading to the genetic dyslipoproteinemias. More recently, he has pioneered the use of transgenic mice and rabbits as well as recombinant adenovirus vectors to identify genes that modulate lipoprotein metabolism and the development of atherosclerosis. Dr. Brewer current focus is the development of methods to raise HDL for the treatment of high risk patients with cardiovascular disease.

A recipient of the JD Lane Investigator Award from the US Public Health Service, Dr. Brewer also received the Heinrich Wieland Prize from the Federal Republic of Germany and the Public Health Service Commendation Award, Meritorious & Service, Distinguished Service Medals from the NIH, George Lyman Duff Memorial Award Lecture, and the Robert I. Levy Award.

Dr. Brewer received his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine in California. After completing his internship and residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Dr. Brewer joined the NHLBI.
 

Dr. John J.P. Kastelein, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine and Chairman of the Department of Vascular Medicine at the Academic Medical Centre at the University of Amsterdam, where he holds the Strategic Chair of Genetics of Cardiovascular Disease and he is the Director of the Atherosclerosis Research Group. He is also the president of the Dutch Atherosclerosis Society as well as the National Scientific Committee on Familial Hypercholesterolemia. 

He has published over 500 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and is an internationally recognized expert on the diagnosis and treatment of lipid and lipoprotein disorders, in particular, familial hypercholesterolemia, and research in the area of molecular biology of cholesterol transport.