Dr. Van Eyk, Ph.D., is a Professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Director of the Basic Science Research in the Barbra Streisand Woman’s Hearth Center and Director of the new Advance Clinical Biosystems Institute where she recently moved from Johns Hopkins University. The institute mandate is to facilitate application of proteomics throughout medicine and enhance translation of new therapies and biomarkers to clinical use through the application of innovative technologies. Her research laboratory studies the underlying molecular mechanism of heart and vascular disease using a large number of proteomic methodologies focusing on the site-specific identification and quantification of disease induced post-translational modifications. The underlying concept of competitive post-translational modifications that act as molecular switches that sense and respond to dynamic changes within the cell.
Widely regarded as an international leader in the field of proteomics, Van Eyk is best known for developing a number of lab tests to determine the presence of certain proteins or amino acids in patients' blood, which could indicate whether they have experienced a heart attack or have heart disease. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in biology and chemistry at the University of Waterloo, Canada and her doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. During her directorship of the Johns Hopkins National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Proteomics Center, a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Proteomics Center located at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Van Eyk also served as director of the Bayview Proteomics Group and as professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology in Biological Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering. She has over 210 peer reviewed manuscripts, reviews, book chapters and has co-edited two books.