BIO
Dario Alessi is Director of the Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, a Medical Research Council unit in the School of Life Sciences at Dundee University. His research has contributed to a better understanding of the cellular signaling pathways involved in cancer, diabetes and blood pressure. His studies of the LRRK2 pathway and the Rab enzyme have enabled the development of drugs – now in late-phase clinical trials – to prevent or slow the progression of Parkinson’s. After identifying other components of the LRRK2 pathway, he is exploring whether it is possible to develop enhancers of the PPM1H protein phosphatase for the treatment of this neurodegenerative disease. Professor Alessi is a Fellow of the Royal Society, which awarded him its Francis Crick Prize Lectureship, and holds the Gold Medal of the European Molecular Biology Organization. He is also an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, and in 2023 received the Jeantet-Collen Prize for Translational Medicine.
