Professor Ammar Al-Chalabi

Ammar Al-Chalabi is Professor of Neurology and Complex Disease Genetics at King’s College London, and a consultant neurologist at King’s College Hospital, London, UK. He is Director of the King’s MND Care and Research Centre, an MND Association endorsed centre of excellence, combining a world class multi-professional specialist MND clinic and a research team of international standing. He was awarded the prestigious Sheila Essey Award in ALS from the American Academy of Neurology this year. His research focusses on understanding the causes of MND and how they relate to the different ways that MND affects people. His research team have identified or helped identify most of the known gene variations involved in MND, recently completing the largest ever genetic study of the condition, and he now co-leads the international Project MinE consortium, aiming to completely sequence the entire genomes of 15,000 people with MND. He leads a European consortium, STRENGTH, using genetics, population registers and environmental questionnaires to identify subtypes of MND, which recently showed that on average six different molecular steps are needed for MND to happen. His clinical research focusses on answering the most frequently asked patient questions, leading to an estimate of the risk of MND to relatives, an estimate of the lifetime risk of MND, and a clinical staging system. He also runs clinical trials of new potential treatments for MND.