Leon de Windt was born on the island of Curaçao, obtained a Master’s degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Utrecht University in 1994 and a PhD in Cardiovascular Physiology at Maastricht University in 1999. Following a postdoctoral residence where he studied signal transduction in cardiac remodeling at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Jeffery Molkentin in Cincinnati OH USA, he became group leader at the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht, The Netherlands in 2002. In 2010, he was appointed as Professor of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology at the Department of Cardiology at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht at Maastricht University.
Academic findings from his team have contributed to establishing the Dutch biotech companies Lead Pharma BV and Mirabilis Therapeutics BV. The new Dutch startup biotech Summa Biotech BV in Utrecht the Netherlands obtained licenses to his findings to develop rational therapies for cardiac regeneration.
His research uses genetic manipulation in hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes and mouse models of heart disease and focuses on developing new therapy options for inherited heart diseases, discovering non-coding RNAs as regulators of cardiac gene expression, and exploring new approaches for gene delivery to the human heart.
Leon is the recipient of several Awards, including the Louis N. and Arnold M. Katz Basic Science Research Award for Young Investigators from the American Heart Association; the VENI, VIDI and VICI career development awards from the Dutch Research Council (NWO); an ERC Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council, the Outstanding Achievement Award of the ESC Council for Basic Cardiovascular Science and the Galenus Research Prize. He was coordinator of the Dutch CardioVascular Alliance (DCVA) funded ARENA and ARENA-PRIME consortia aimed to tackle inherited heart diseases and the Marie Curie ITN consortium TRAIN-HEART focusing on regenerative approaches for ischemic heart disease. He currently coordinates the Era4Health RECREATE consortium that focuses on cardiac regeneration.
Many alumni from his group have successfully started their own research laboratories, fulfill executive industrial functions or became clinician-researchers as the future generation of leaders in medicine.
