Gabriele Kaminski Schierle

Gabriele Kaminski Schierle is Professor of Molecular Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, UK, and serves as the leader of the Molecular Neuroscience group. After her studies in Switzerland at the Université de Fribourg, she moved to Sweden and obtained her PhD in 1999 from Lund University, where she discovered a method that significantly increases the survival rate of neurones transplanted into the brains of patients suffering from Parkinson’s Disease (PD). This method led to one the most cited papers in the field, international media attention, and personal awards (Parkinson’s Disease foundation prize, USA; Swedish Medical Research Promising Investigator).

Although the therapeutic success of the transplantation method was spectacular, she soon realised that the grafting of human embryonic tissue cannot constitute a long-term medical strategy and that cures must be sought by addressing the root causes of the disease. A personal fellowship from the Wellcome Trust permitted her to come to Cambridge and begin training on the molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases.

She has since built up an internationally recognised research group and infrastructure to investigate the molecular mechanisms causing proteins to misfold and form amyloid aggregates in model systems mimicking aspects of PD, Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Huntington’s Disease. Her group has pioneered a research approach that combines advanced biophysical/optical methods with molecular neurobiology for research into neurodegeneration.