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Medical Student Research

Mark de Caestecker, M.B., B.S., Ph.D., F.A.S.N.

Professor of Medicine, Surgery, and Cell & Developmental Biology

Dr. Mark de Caestecker graduated with a B.A. in Medicine and Philosophy from Peterhouse College in Cambridge in 1980 and with his medical degree from the Middlesex Hospital at the University of London in 1983. He completed his internship and residency equivalent at the Middlesex Hospital and his Nephrology Fellowship equivalent at Manchester Royal Infirmary. In 1990, Dr. de Caestecker temporarily left his clinical training to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester, which he defended in 1994, and then worked as a Wellcome Trust postdoctoral fellow at the NIH. Dr. de Caestecker’s research focuses on mechanisms and therapeutic manipulation of intrinsic tissue repair and regenerative mechanisms following kidney injury. He seeks to develop treatments that increase effective tissue repair and thereby reduce the burden of chronic kidney disease resulting from episodes of acute kidney injury. Dr. de Caestecker’s lab also studies the role of BMP signaling and the effects of different hereditary BMP receptor mutations on pulmonary vascular function in patients with hereditary pulmonary arterial hypertension. Dr. de Caestecker practices internal medicine and nephrology at the VA Hospital, and he is heavily invested in graduate and medical education. He is Director of the HHMI Certificate Program in Molecular Medicine, the Vanderbilt Center for Kidney Disease Medical Student Summer Research Training in Nephrology, the Vanderbilt Mouse Kidney Injury Workshop, and the Vanderbilt Program in Molecular Medicine, a clinical enrichment program for biomedical sciences doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows. Dr de Caestecker also serves as Research Director for Vanderbilt medical students interested in bench research.