Sanjiv Kaul is an Indian American physician-scientist and cardiologist. He is the Ernest C. Swigert Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine and Professor of Medicine and Radiology at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), as well as the founder of Vasocardea, a company developing drugs for small vessel disease and an OHSU spin-off. Most of his work on myocardial contrast echocardiography was conducted at the University of Virginia (UVA), while his research on pericytes and GPR39 was carried out at OHSU. Kaul is most known for his research in cardiovascular imaging and coronary artery disease, focusing on coronary physiology and pathophysiology in animal models and humans, and he holds multiple patents for his work. His publications comprise over 400 papers with a Scopus H-index of 92 and more than 36,000 citations. He has received honors, including being named among the Castle Connolly Top Doctors in America since 2003, and receiving awards, such as the Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association in 1992, the Outstanding Investigator Award from the American Federation for Clinical Research in 1995, the first Richard Popp Gifted Teacher Award from the American Society of Echocardiography in 2001, the American Heart Association Women in Cardiology Mentoring Award in 2003, the Distinguished Scientist Award from the American College of Cardiology in 2012, and the American Heart Association's James B. Herrick Award in 2015. Kaul is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the Association of University Cardiologists.
Education Kaul earned a medical degree from Maulana Azad Medical College, University of Delhi, in 1975, before emigrating to the United States in 1977. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Vermont, followed by a clinical cardiology fellowship at the Wadsworth Veterans Administration Hospital, University of California, Los Angeles. He then received additional clinical and research training in cardiovascular imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
Career Kaul began his academic career as an Assistant Professor of medicine at the University of Virginia in 1984 and became a full Professor in 1993, before being named the Frances Myers Ball Professor of Cardiology in 1997. In 2005, he joined Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) as Chief of Cardiology and later became the Founding Director of the Knight Cardiovascular Institute, working alongside Albert Starr from 2012 to 2018. Since then, he has held the Ernest C. Swigert Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine and served as a Professor of Medicine and Radiology at OHSU where he heads an active research laboratory. Kaul served as President of the American Society of Echocardiography from 2010 to 2011 and as Governor of the Oregon chapter of the American College of Cardiology from 2013 to 2016. In 2018, Kaul founded Vasocardea, where he has served as President.
Research Kaul's research has spanned coronary artery disease, coronary microcirculation, and cardiac imaging, with particular emphasis on echocardiography and nuclear cardiology. He has received patents for GPR39-targeting drugs and diagnostic probes, aimed at treating various conditions, including cardiovascular, endocrine, cancer, metabolic, gastrointestinal, liver, hematological, neurological, and respiratory diseases.
Coronary microcirculation Kaul's research has primarily focused on the coronary microcirculation, leading multiple studies in the field. During the early part of his career, he used nuclear cardiology techniques for coronary artery disease detection and prognosis. Since, echocardiography, a more ubiquitous clinical tool for imaging various cardiac structures, could not assess myocardial perfusion, he became interested in the use of microbubbles to determine myocardial perfusion with echocardiography, a technique that had its origins in the early 1980's.
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