Constantinos Deltas
Professor | Director of Research - UNIC Health
Profile
Constantinos Deltas is a Professor of Genetics and Molecular Medicine at the University of Nicosia Medical School, and is appointed as Director of Research to lead and coordinate the research strategy across UNIC Health.
Prof. Deltas received his Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and his PhD in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at the joint graduate program of the Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, USA. He specialized in Biochemistry, molecular biology and human genetics.
His research interests are on the study of inherited diseases with a focus on kidney disorders, amongst others. His work included pioneering studies on polycystic kidney disease, MUC1 kidney disease and familial hematurias, including Alport syndrome, with national and global impact. His work contributed substantially to the elucidation of molecular and cellular pathomechanisms, the mapping and cloning of genes and the formulation of new hypotheses regarding disease development and progression. He developed the first knockin mouse model for Alport syndrome on which they applied successfully the first preclinical trial with the use of repurposed synthetic molecular chaperones. He was one of the first people to establish molecular diagnostics and molecular medicine approaches in Cyprus.
Prof Deltas established the first Biobank in Cyprus with funding from the European Research Development Fund and the Government of Cyprus through the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation. Subsequently, with European funding through the Horizon 2020, supplemented by governmental matching funds, he was the Founder and first Director of the biobank.cy, a Center of Excellence in Biobanking and Biomedical Research, at the University of Cyprus. This enabled the upgrading of the Biobank to a European standard medical research infrastructure, thus creating opportunities for next generation Biomedical Research in Cyprus. More recently, he expanded his research activities to the systematic analysis of hundreds of families with inherited cardiomyopathies and eye diseases, while his Center established CYPROME, a platform that described the first reference genome of Cypriots.
Prof Deltas has authored more than 200 publications, mainly in peer-reviewed journals including reviews and book chapters. He has authored the only book on the genetics of Cypriots (BETA Medical Arts, Athens, 2015) and he has been invited to lecture in many conferences and Universities as an expert in his field. He has been classified amongst the World’s Top 2% cited Scientists Network, according to the Elsevier Stanford University List, based on career achievements. The main field of his expertise as defined in his inclusion is Biomedical Research, with two subfields, Genetics & Heredity and Urology & Nephrology.