Professor Gabriele Lignani
Finding novel gene therapy approaches for intractable neurological diseases, such as acquired pharmaco-resistant temporal lobe epilepsies, Dravet syndrome, dementia, that have rapid potential for translation.
Gabriele Lignani is Professor of Translational Neuroscience at UCL. He received his PhD in Experimental Neuroscience from the University of Genoa, and he did his first postdoc at the Italian Institute of Technology. Then he moved to UCL and was awarded a Marie Curie individual fellowship to develop new CRISPR-based editing tools to treat epilepsy. He started his own lab as Epilepsy Research UK Emerging Leader to further develop novel gene therapies for epilepsy.
He then obtained an MRC New Investigator Award to develop new CRISPR-based technologies for Dravet syndrome, and more recently an ERC Consolidator grant and several other discovery and translational grants. For his research in gene therapy for epilepsy he has recently been awarded the ILAE Harinarayan Young Scientist Award 2021, the Michael Prize 2023 for the best scientific contribution to progress in the field of experimental epilepsy, the European Young Investigator Award 2024 in recognition of outstanding contributions to epilepsy research and has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. He is honorary Ambassador of Genoa (Italy) in the World, and he is also a co-founder of an UCL spinout company that aims to bring gene therapy for focal refractory epilepsy to the clinic.
