Professor John Kane
Disclosure details
None declaredProfessor of Medicine and Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Associate Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine
John Kane, MD, PhD is Professor of Medicine and Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Associate Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. He is an attending physician in the UCSF Endocrine Clinic, Director of the Adult Lipid Clinic, and Director of the Genomic Resource in Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease (a collection of > 39,000 individual human samples of plasma and DNA with extensive clinical annotation for collaborations with other research groups)
He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Biology at Oregon State University; his Master’s in Protein Chemistry and MD at Oregon Health Sciences University. His residency was at Stanford and UCSF. He then served in the US Public Health Service Heart Disease Control Program where he instituted triglyceride measurement in the heart disease field study. He was then a fellow in Endocrinology at the UCSF School of Medicine where he also obtained his PhD in Lipoprotein Chemistry and Metabolism. He joined the faculty at UCSF in 1965.
Dr Kane began his independent research as an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association, followed by a number of research awards, grants , and other funding. He was a fellow of the Fondacion Leducq and was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Membership in the NLA in addition to many teaching and other awards.
Dr Kane conducted one of the first human studies to demonstrate the reversal of coronary disease by lipid lowering (SCOR Trial). His molecular research began with the discovery of proteins involved in lipid biology, starting with the discovery of apolipoprotein B-48 in chylomicrons. His research then found six more apolipoproteins, including Apolipoprotein L-1, located in the human brain, that is cytocidal for Trypanosomes. This work was coupled with the identification of individual molecular species of High Density Lipoproteins, including the species that contains the endotoxin binding protein affording protection against endotoxin sepsis, and Prebeta-1 HDL, the recipient particle for cholesterol effluxed from the cell, and emerging as an important indicator of cardiac risk. More recently, his research has investigated the roles of a large number of cytokines that interact with lipoproteins, probably involved in vascular inflammation. The interactions of each cytokine with individual lipoprotein species are now being studied with machine learning-AI.
His laboratory collaborates worldwide with others in molecular and clinical studies. He has published more than 360 papers in peer reviewed journals and a number of book chapters. He has contributed to the training of many postdoctoral fellows, residents and students.
