The major health burden in a progressively obese and ageing population is cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease research requires tight cooperation between medical doctors, biomedical researchers, biochemists, biologists, bio-informaticians and genetics and imaging experts. Their input is crucial to integrate the available data and translate it to clinical knowledge and vice versa. To achieve this ambition, the AMC CardioVascular community has delineated a set of common themes as ‘areas of excellence’:
(1) genetics and systems biology of CardioVascular disease
(2) interaction of Lipids and Immunology in CardioVascular disease progression and organ damage
(3) multiplication of research impact by integrating technological and clinical resources.