Yogen Kanthi

Yogen Kanthi, (born 1979) is an American cardiologist and vascular medicine specialist at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in Bethesda, Maryland where he studies the role of immunity and inflammation in the development of vascular diseases.
 
He is a Lasker Clinical Research Scholar Awardee at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is presently the head of the Laboratory of Vascular Thrombosis and Inflammation at NHLBI, Lasker Scholar and a member of the Distinguished Scholar Program at NIH.
 
== Education and early career == 
Kanthi completed medical school at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, his residency and chief medical residency in internal medicine at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in 2009. He completed advanced fellowships in cardiology, vascular medicine, and a post-doctoral fellowship in vascular biology with Dr. David Pinsky at the University of Michigan. He has been a faculty member at the University of Michigan since 2014 and helps to direct its Vascular Medicine Fellowship Program. Kanthi was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Society for Vascular Medicine in 2021.
 
Kanthi’s initial research focused on the role of purinergic regulation by biomechanical forces and performed studies demonstrating that the ectonucleotidase CD39/ENTPD1 could protect blood vessels against atherosclerosis.
After treating a series of young patients in his clinic with unexplained blood clots, he focused his research program to study the inflammatory causes of thrombosis. In 2019, he extended his findings of purinergic signaling in blood vessels to demonstrate that an inflammatory cytokine, interleukin 1 beta can cause venous thrombosis, and how CD39/ENTPD1 can prevent neutrophils from undergoing an inflammatory form of cell death that releases neutrophil extracellular traps.
 
In 2020, the Albert Lasker|Albert and Mary Lasker|Mary Lasker Foundation and the NIH named him a Lasker Investigator, and recruited Kanthi from the University of Michigan to start a Vascular Medicine Translational Research Program at the NIH focused on the role of inflammation in thrombotic diseases.
 
== Current work and achievements == 
Following the onset of the pandemic, Kanthi and University of Michigan rheumatologist Dr. Jason S. Knight extended their prior collaborations on adenosine signaling in vascular and autoimmune disease to understand the causes of severe COVID-19. Together, they were the first to describe the role of neutrophil extracellular traps in patients with COVID-19. Although controversial at the time, their work has been replicated by many groups across the world. They also discovered that patients with severe COVID-19 infection have dysregulated production of prothrombotic autoantibodies, similar to another thromboinflammatory disorder antiphospholipid syndrome, now considered a landmark discovery about the pathobiology of blood clotting in COVID-19. They demonstrated that autoantibodies from patients with severe COVID contribute to inflammation in neutrophils and endothelial cells. They went on to identify a novel biomarker calprotectin that predicts the risk of respiratory failure in patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Altogether, his contributions to understanding the thrombotic and inflammatory processes that affect patients with COVID-19 have received widespread press coverage and have directly informed multiple clinical trials. . Kanthi has advocated for high quality clinical trials in COVID-19 to test repurposed drugs that are accessible and available to developing nations.
 
His ongoing work is focused on unraveling the inflammatory causes of thrombosis to develop new treatments for patients with vascular disease.
 
== Honors and awards ==
Kanthi has been a visiting professor and invited speaker at many medical and research institutes around the world.
 
* 2015: McKay Award, University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center
* 2015: Bo Schembechler Heart of A Champion Award, University of Michigan
* 2016: Young Physician Scientist Award, American Society for Clinical Investigation
* 2016: AVF-Jobst Young Investigator Award, American Venous Forum (AVF)
* 2020: Lasker Clinical Research Scholar Award, NHLBI, NIH
* 2020: Distinguished Scholar Program, National Institutes of Health
* 2020: Frankel Cardiovascular Center COVID-19 Ignitor Award, University of Michigan 
* 2021: Early Career Alumni Achievement Award, Ohio State University College of Medicine
* 2021: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Insitute (NHLBI) Director's Award
 
== Notable publications ==
1. Kanthi Y, Hyman MC...Pinsky DJ. Flow-dependent Expression of Ectonucleotidase tri(di)phosphohydrolase-1 and Suppression of Atherosclerosis. Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2015, Aug 3. doi: 10.1172/JCI79514. PubMed .
 
2. Yadav V,...Kanthi Y. ENTPD-1 Disrupts Inflammasome IL-1 beta –driven Venous Thrombosis. Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2019, Apr 16. doi: 10.1172/JCI124804. PubMed .
 
3. Zuo Y,... Kanthi Y*, Knight JS* *equal contributions. Prothrombotic Autoantibodies in Serum from Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19. Science Translational Medicine, 2021, Oct 30. doi: 10.1126//scitranslmed.abd3876. PubMed .
 
4. Zuo Y,... Kanthi Y*, Knight JS* *equal contributions. Neutrophil Extracellular Traps in COVID-19. JCI Insight, 2020, April 23. doi: 10.1171/jci.insight.138999. PubMed .
 
5. Kanthi Y, Knight JS, Zuo Y, Pinsky DJ. New (re)Purpose for an Old Drug: Purinergic Modulation may Extinguish the COVID-19 Thromboinflammatory Firestorm. JCI Insight, 2020, Jul 23. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.140971. PubMed .
 
6. Colling ME and Kanthi Y. COVID-19 – associated coagulopathy: An Exploration of Mechanisms. Vascular Medicine Journal, 2020, Jun 19. doi: 10.1177/1358863X20932640. PubMed .
 
7. Colling M, Tourdot BE and Kanthi Y. Inflammation, Infection and Venous Thromboembolism. Circulation Research, 2021, Jun 11. doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.121.318225. PubMed .
 
Category:American medical researchers
Category:University of Michigan alumni
Category:American cardiologists
Category:1979 births