Mark van Buchem is professor of neuroradiology and chairman of the Department of Radiology at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC).

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Mark van Buchem is professor of neuroradiology and chairman of the Department of Radiology at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC).

Neuroradiology

Radiology is the medical discipline that employs imaging technology for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Neuroradiology is a sub-discipline of radiology that focuses on the central nervous system and its surrounding structures (head and neck, as well as the spine). Radiology is a dynamic field that evolves continuously, since it follows technological developments closely. These developments have resulted in powerful tools that allow us to obtain in a non-invasive manner very detailed structural and functional information in patients on the one hand, and on the other hand to intervene with disease processes using image-guided, minimally invasive methods. Currently, radiology plays a central role in medicine.

Van Buchem’s scientific work is focused on the aging brain. He is fascinated by the changes that occur in aging brains, and in particular by the causes and consequences of these changes. He is interested in the role of diseases of the heart and blood vessels on the aging brain, and in particular by the role of conditions affecting cerebral small vessels. Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is a small vessel disease that affects many elderly individuals world-wide. A hereditary variant of CAA (hereditary cerebral hemorrhages with amyloidosis, Dutch-type, or HCHWA-D) clusters in Katwijk, a coastal village close to Leiden, and offers unique opportunities to unravel disease mechanisms in CAA and to develop treatment for CAA. Van Buchem and colleagues have a special scientific focus on HCHWA-D.

Scientific career

Mark van Buchem obtained both his MD and PhD degree at Leiden University. The title of his PhD thesis was: “On leukostasis in leukemia”.

After completing a residency program in Radiology at the LUMC, he spent the years 1994 and 1995 at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia to deepen his knowledge in the clinical and scientific aspects of neuroradiology. Back at the LUMC, he developed a neuroradiology section with various clinical subdisciplines and started the Neuroimaging Research Group. In 1998 he became chief of the clinical neuroradiology section. His research group expanded rapidly, initially focusing on cerebral aging, migraine and cerebral lupus erythematosus and using MRI technology and image analysis techniques to study these conditions. Over the years, the number of diseases being studied in the Neuroimaging Research Group has increased, and van Buchem’s personal interest has shifted to cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). In 2002, van Buchem was appointed as professor in neuroradiology at Leiden University. In 2005 he co-founded the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition. In 2005-2006, van Buchem was visiting professor at Harvard University Medical School and visiting scientist at the Department of Radiology of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In 2007 he founded the C.J. Gorter Center for High-Field MRI at the LUMC. Since 2011, he is clinical leader of the Medical Delta Imaging Institute. In 2013 he co-founded the Dutch CAA Foundation and in 2014 the International CAA Association. In 2014, he was appointed as chairman of the LUMC department of Radiology.

Over the years, van Buchem developed an extensive national and international network of scientific collaborations. In the Netherlands, he was leader of two large research consortia: one was focused on developing molecular markers for Alzheimer’s disease, the other on the heart-brain axis in aging. Internationally, two long-lasting collaborations proved to be notably fruitful: population-based research in Iceland, together with the NIH Institute for Aging (Bethesda, USA), and CAA research with the Stroke Research group at the Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, USA). Van Buchem has been actively involved in the leadership of national and international scientific and professional societies, and he has been an active member of numerous national and international committees, advisory boards and editorial boards.