Biography

Dr. Pedro A. Jose is Professor of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology, Georgetown University School of Medicine and Visiting Professor, Third Military Medical University of the People’s Republic of China, Chongqing, P.R. China and Anhui Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, Anhui Provincial Hospital, Anhui, P.R. China. He has been invited as a guest lecturer in several universities in Australia, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, Sweden, Philippines, and USA and plenary speaker in several international meetings of learned societies.

Dr. Jose received his MD degree, magna cum laude, meritissimus, from the University of Santo Tomas, Philippines, and placed first in the Philippine National Board Examinations in Medicine and Surgery.  He received his PhD degree in Physiology from Georgetown University, Washington, DC and defended his dissertation with distinction.  He is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics, American Sub-Board of Pediatric Nephrology, and American Society of Hypertension. He was President of the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology.  Dr. Jose has chaired and continues to chair Study Sections and Emphasis Panels of the US National Institutes of Health and voluntary organizations, such as the American Heart Association and National Kidney Foundation. He reviews grant applications in foreign countries, including Italy and the Czech Republic.

Dr. Jose has extensive experience in basic and translational research.  The primary goal of Dr. Jose’s research is to determine the genetic bases of human essential hypertension. He has published over 340 scientific articles in prestigious journals and books including Circulation Research, Hypertension, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Nature Genetics, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His publications are cited more than 7,800 times with 41 cited more than 50 times, 17 of which are cited more than 100 times; four are covers of scientific journals and six are the subject of editorial commentaries. Dr. Jose has received several academic awards, including the 2003 Lewis K. Dahl Memorial Lecture (Council for High Blood Pressure Research, American Heart Association), 2007 Ernest H. Starling Distinguished Lecture (American Physiological Society Water and Electrolyte Homeostasis Section) and a 2007 MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health.  He is a fellow of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research, American Heart Association.

A key finding of Dr. Jose’s research is the demonstration of the crucial role of variants of a gene “G protein-coupled receptor kinase type 4 or GRK4” in the pathogenesis of high blood pressure in humans.   Dr. Jose also showed that variations of GRK4 are very important in predisposing an individual to develop salt-sensitive high blood pressure.  These studies have resulted in a patent in the US (# 6,660,474) and Japan (#4652566), patent-pending in Europe and Australia) and a provisional patent on “Compositions and Methods for Identifying and Diagnosing Salt Sensitivity of Blood Pressure” (US Provisional Patent Application #61,636,576).Variants of GRK4 may also predict the response to anti-hypertensive drugs, an example of pharmacogenomics. Four of his National Institutes of Health research grant applications received perfect scores of 10 (Project 3 of 5P01HL074940 [2009], Project 4 of 5P01HL068686 [2012], HL092196 [2013], and R01DK039308 [2011]).  Dr. Jose’s research is currently funded by three R01 grants in which he is the principal investigator, two P01 grants in which he is the director of program projects, and one grant from pharma. Deciphering the role of GRK4 gene variants, in the pathogenesis of human essential hypertension, was the second advance and discovery cited by the Director of NHLBI for its FY 2004 Budget Justification to the US Congress.