Board Member of the CO2 Coalition, Dr. Jan L. Breslow, Professor Emeritus of Rockefeller University, has done pioneering work on the genetics of heart disease and is a past President of the American Heart Association.

Dr. Breslow received a B.A. in Chemistry from Columbia College, an M.A. in Chemistry from Columbia University, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He did an internship and residency at Boston Children’s Hospital. In 1970 he became a Staff Fellow at the National Heart Institute, where he conducted clinical research on patients with familial lipoprotein disorders and worked in the laboratory on apolipoproteins, which coat lipoprotein particles and determine their metabolism. In 1973 he returned to Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he established a clinic for families with metabolic diseases and became board-certified in pediatrics. He also continued his pioneering work on the genetics of heart disease. He isolated many of the apolipoprotein genes and identified genetic variants that predispose to heart disease. This work included demonstrating that genetic variation in the apoE gene was due to three alleles at a single locus, named E4, E3, and E2. These apoE alleles were subsequently shown to affect susceptibility to hyperlipidemia, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and many other conditions.

In 1984 he became Professor at Rockefeller University and Senior Physician at Rockefeller Hospital. He established a clinic for patients with lipoprotein abnormalities and performed clinical research on lipoprotein metabolism. In the laboratory he was a very early adopter of gene knockout technology and used it to knock out the mouse apoE gene. These mice were hyperlipidemic and developed human-like atherosclerotic lesions. This “heart attack mouse” has been used widely to study drug, dietary, and genetic effects on atherosclerosis susceptibility. He also identified a new gene that regulates LDL cholesterol levels, PCSK9. PCSK9 inhibitors (mAbs) are now in common use as potent regulators of LDL cholesterol levels.

Dr. Breslow has published over 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers. He has received many honors, including the 1984 E. Mead Johnson Award of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the 1991 Heinrich Wieland Prize from Germany in lipid research, the 1994 Basic Research Prize of the American Heart Association, and the 2000 Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cardiovascular Research. Dr. Breslow was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1995, the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina in 1996, and the Institute of Medicine in 1997.

He has also served as Vice President for Research and President of the American Heart Association.