Professor Jolanda van der Velden

Jolanda van der Velden, PhD, is chair of the Departments of Physiology and Experinental Cardiology at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. The main research interest of the van der Velden group is to study the role of sarcomere proteins in cardiac performance for which specific protein analyses and functional assays have been designed. As mutations in sarcomere proteins are a frequent cause of heart disease at young age, research on this topic was initiated with funding from European and prestigious national grants. The national research consortium (Double Dose) funded by the Netherlands Heart Foundation aims to study effects of genetic and environmental modifiers in cardiomyopathy. Studies on the genetic heart disease include basic cell and tissue analyses, which are combined with in vivo cardiovascular imaging in mouse models and human patients.