Cardiovascular Physiology/Circulation

BIOGRAPHY

David Bates completed his PhD in 1992 at St George's Hospital Medical School, on the microvascular parameters affecting post mastectomy lymphoedema in patients. After a year learning molecular biology at Glasgow University in Drosophila genetics, he spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Davis, where he developed the existing single capillary cannulation technique to examine chronic regulation of permeability by growth factors, and started investigating VEGF signalling. He continued these studies as a lecturer at the University of Leicester, investigating the mechanism by which VEGF increases permeability using novel tyrosine kinase inhibitors. During that time he developed angiogenesis protocols to investigate VEGF signalling during blood vessel growth and moved to the University of Bristol as a BHF research fellow. In 2001 he was awarded a BHF lectureship, and in collaboration with Dr Steven Harper, a consultant nephrologist at Southmead Hospital, established the Microvascular Research Laboratories within the School of Veterinary Sciences. In that year he discovered the anti-angiogenic class of VEGF splice variants, and now investigates the potential of VEGF-splice variants, VEGF-induced angiogenesis and arteriogenesis, VEGF-receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors, VEGF-activated ion channels and VEGF induced lymphatic metastasis. He was appointed Professor of Microvascular Biology and Medicine in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology in Bristol in 2007.