UK
Professor John Collinge
Professor of Neurology and Head of the Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, UCL Institute of Neurology
Director of the UK Medical Research Council’s Prion Unit
Director of the NHS National Prion Clinic, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London
Professor Collinge’s laboratory demonstrated in 1996 that the new human prion disease, variant CJD, was caused by the same prion strain as that causing BSE in cattle and has made many of the key contributions to understanding the prion diseases since 1989. In addition, he has made wider contributions in the genetics of neurodegenerative disease, including frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and motor neurone disease.
He has a particular interest in therapeutics of prion and Alzheimer’s disease and is developing both small molecule and immunotherapeutics. He has a major interest in the wider implications of prion-like mechanisms and their relation to the accumulation and toxicity of misfolded host proteins in neurodegeneration.
More detail on his research can be found at MRC Prion Unit. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Founder Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, an Inaugural Senior Investigator of the Faculty of the National Institute for Health Research and an Honorary Fellow of the American Neurological Association. He was awarded a CBE by HM the Queen for services to medical research.