Ammar Al-Chalabi is Professor of Neurology and Complex Disease Genetics at the Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

, where he is also head of the Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience and Director of the King's Motor Neuron Disease Research Centre. In 2020, he received the Forbes Norris Award from the International Alliance Of Als/Mnd Associations and was a co-winner of the Healey Center International Prize for Innovation in ALS. His other awards include the Sheila Essey Award from the

American Academy of Neurology The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) is a professional society representing over 40,000 neurologists and neuroscientists. As a medical specialty society it was established in 1948 by A.B. Baker of the University of Minnesota to advance the a ...

and the Charcot Young Investigator Award from the Motor Neurone Disease Association. In 2021 he was appointed Senior Investigator at the

National Institute for Health Research The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is the British government's major funder of clinical, public health, social care and translational research. With a budget of over £1.2 billion in 2020–21, its mission is to "improv ...

(NIHR).

Biography

Al-Chalabi is married with two sons and is a drummer in a band in his spare time. As a child, Al-Chalabi hoped to join the Australian Flying Ambulance. His father worked for BP and the family moved often. He was initially rejected from 14 different medical schools, going on to become a leader in his field. After completing neurology training, he worked as a consultant at

in 2000, a research exchange scholar at

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvar ...

and

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 2001. According to his Lancet profile;

"Chalabi’s collaboration with Robert H Brown Jr, Chair and Professor of Neurology at MGH resulted in the discovery of a
chromosome 9 Chromosome 9 is one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans. Humans normally have two copies of this chromosome, as they normally do with all chromosomes. Chromosome 9 spans about 138 million base pairs of nucleic acids (the building blocks of DN ...
p linkage in
ALS Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or—in the United States—Lou Gehrig's disease (LGD), is a rare, terminal neurodegenerative disorder that results in the progressive loss of both upper and low ...
and
frontotemporal dementia Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), also called frontotemporal degeneration disease or frontotemporal neurocognitive disorder, encompasses several types of dementia involving the progressive degeneration of the brain's frontal lobe, frontal and tempor ...
. .. A second related study, with researcher Chris Shaw, now head of the Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience at King’s College London, further paved the way for the detection of the most common cause of ALS, the
C9orf72 C9orf72 (chromosome 9 open reading frame 72) is a protein which in humans is encoded by the gene ''C9orf72''. The human ''C9orf72'' gene is located on the short (p) arm of chromosome 9 open reading frame 72, from base pair 27,546,546 to base pa ...

mutation In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, ...
. In 2016, Al-Chalabi and colleagues identified new risk variants and found evidence of ALS being a complex genetic trait with a polygenetic architecture, describing four new ALS genes. .. l-Chalabialso leads the European JPND STRENGTH consortium, looking at the development of personalised treatments by interaction analysis of various risk factors, and co-leads a UK national ALS register, that aims to record all cases of the disease (of which there are an estimated 5000 at any one time)."

References

External links

Faculty page
* Living people Academics of King's College London Alumni of King's College London Alumni of the University of Leicester Year of birth missing (living people) NIHR Senior Investigators {{Neuroscientist-stub

Biography

References

Further reading

External links