Dr. Peter Libby is a cardiovascular specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and holds the Mallinckrodt Professorship of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He served as chief of cardiovascular medicine at BWH from 1998 to 2014. His areas of clinical expertise include general and preventive cardiology. His current research focus is the role of inflammation in vascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. Dr. Libby has a particular devotion to translating his basic laboratory studies to pilot and then large-scale clinical cardiovascular outcome trials. He instigated and helped to lead the Canakinumab Anti–Inflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Trial (CANTOS) that provided clinical validation of the role of inflammation in atherosclerosis.
Dr. Libby has received numerous awards and recognitions for his research accomplishments, including the Gold Medal of the European Society of Cardiology (2011), the Basic Research Prize of the American Heart Association (2011), the Anitschkow Prize in Atherosclerosis Research of the European Atherosclerosis Society (2013) and the Special Award of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology (2014). Dr. Libby was selected as consulting editor of the year by Circulation Research in 2015, and received a 2015 High Citation Award as an editorial board member of Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. He was the laureate of the Ernst Jung Gold Medal for Medicine for 2016 and received the Earl Benditt Award from the North American Vascular Biology Organization in 2017.
Dr. Libby’s elected professional memberships include the Association of American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation and has honorary memberships in the British Atherosclerosis Society, the Japan Circulation Society, and the Japanese College of Cardiology. He has served as the president of the Association of University Cardiologists. He also has served in many roles for the American Heart Association, including chairman of several research committees and member of the executive committees of the Councils on Arteriosclerosis, Circulation, and Basic Science. He has frequently consulted for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, including a 5–year term on the Board of Scientific Councilors. He directed the DW Reynolds Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center and two cycles of Leducq Foundation Awards and has received continuous funding from the U.S. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) for several decades.
Dr. Libby has published extensively in medical journals including Circulation, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, New England Journal of Medicine and Nature. He is an editor of Braunwald’s Heart Disease, having served as the editor–in–chief of the 8th Edition. Dr. Libby has also contributed chapters to many editions of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine. He has held numerous visiting professorships and delivered more than 100 major named or keynote lectures.
Dr. Libby earned his medical degree at the University of California, San Diego, and completed his training in internal medicine and cardiology at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women’s Hospital). He also holds an honorary M.A. degree from Harvard University and an honorary doctorate from the University of Lille, France.