Jim Otvos

James D. Otvos, Ph.D. is an academician/researcher/entrepreneur in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

From the late 1960s to early 1970s, the basic science work which led to sub-fractionation of lipoprotein particles (chylomicrons, VLDL, IDL, LDL & HDL, plus multiple sub-distinctions within these groupings) had been a breakthrough into how fats needed and manipulated by all cells in the body are carried by the water-based blood transport system; work which led to a Nobel prize in Medicine in 1988. In the early 1990s, given increasing evidence and understanding of the role the many different lipoproteins (not cholesterol per-se) played in the usual progression of atherosclerotic disease, Otvos began novel research work in using NMR spectroscopy to quantify the lipoproteins in first primate and then human plasma. This in turn led to giant decreases in cost while improving accuracy.

His work has led to several rewards for both accuracy and, even more importantly, for great reductions in the cost to patients of having quantitative lipoprotein fractionation; it is no longer just an expensive research tool but has become low enough in cost for most physicians and patients to use the methodology to greatly improve treatment strategies and greatly reducing cardiovascular event rates without resorting to only arterial bypass surgery or angioplasty/stents to treat the symptoms of advanced disease, often after the individual has become permanently disabled.