Dr. Diane Proudfoot Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK

Diane Proudfoot, is a British Heart Foundation-funded Research Fellow at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge. She did her Ph.D. with David Bowyer at the Department of Pathology, Cambridge University where she investigated the effects of macrophage-derived factors on vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation. Her research on vascular calcification started with a... read morepostdoctoral position with Peter Weissberg and Catherine Shanahan at the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge. Her research there identified that various bone-regulatory genes are associated with human vascular calcification in vitro and that apoptosis and lack of clearance of apoptotic bodies can lead to the development of vascular calcification. Her current research with Martin Bootman investigates why vascular calcification is detrimental and in particular, how calcium phosphate particles induce rises in intracellular calcium ion levels and cause cell death in vascular smooth muscle cells.