Marit Westerterp

Dr. Marit Westerterp is Associate Professor at the University Medical Center Groningen. She obtained her PhD from Leiden University and subsequently performed research at Columbia University in New York in the group of Professor Tall. Her research is focused on the crosstalk between cholesterol metabolism and inflammation in atherosclerosis, auto-immunity, and aging. Specifically, she has studied the role of cholesterol efflux pathways mediated by the ATP Binding Cassette A1 and G1 (ABCA1 and ABCG1) transporters. She found that ABCA1 and ABCG1 mediated cholesterol efflux pathways suppress inflammasome activation, leading to amelioration of an auto-immune phenotype and decreased neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation in atherosclerotic lesions; the latter mediated by interleukin-1β (IL-1β) secretion from macrophages. Recently, she discovered that T cell cholesterol efflux pathways suppress T cell aging by decreasing T cell senescence and apoptosis, which affects macrophage inflammation and atherosclerosis. She serves on the editorial boards of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, as well as Circulation Research. Her research is supported by an NWO VIDI grant and Rosalind Franklin Fellowship (with EU Co-Fund attached). She is member of the consortium PLAK-TALK (supported by the Dutch Heart Foundation, German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), and British Heart Foundation).