Diederik Kuster is one of the junior PIs and work package leader of the Double Dose consortium. His main research interest is to understand the molecular modulators of impaired relaxation in inherited cardiomyopathies and translate these findings to identify therapeutic targets.
He obtained his PhD at Erasmus Medical Center focusing on cardiac hypertrophy. A postdoc at VUmc in the van der Velden group followed by a 2 year postdoc at Loyola University Chicago under the supervision of Sakthivel Sadayappan both focused on the role of contractile proteins and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Since 2014 he is an assistant professor at the Department for Physiology at Amsterdam UMC. He uses molecular, biophysical and physiological studies in single cardiomyocytes, cardiac samples from patient tissue, animal models and stem cell-derived models. He currently focuses on high-throughput compound screenings to find new therapeutics. Dr Kuster actively participates in the Dutch Cardiovascular Alliance as Chair of Young@Heart.
Contact: d.kuster@amsterdamumc.nl