Dale Bredesen

Dr. Dale Bredesen is internationally recognized as an expert in the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. His research focuses on the mechanisms of cell death in the nervous system and has led to a new approach to Alzheimer’s disease therapeutics.

Dr. Bredesen earned his undergraduate degree at Caltech, his MD at Duke University, and completed his neurology residency at UCSF.

He was an NIH Fellow in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Stanley Prusiner. In 1989 he joined the faculty at UCLA, where he was awarded the Elizabeth R. and Thomas E. Plott Chair. In 1994, he was recruited to the Burnham Institute to direct the Program on Aging, and then in 1998 became the Founding President and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the nation’s only independent institute devoted to research on aging and age-associated disease.

He has held faculty positions at UCSF, UCLA, and the University of California, San Diego.

He recently completed a term as a member of the National Advisory Council on Aging. The Bredesen Laboratory studies basic mechanisms underlying the neurodegenerative process, and the translation of this knowledge into effective therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions, leading to the publication of over 200 research papers. He established the ADDN (Alzheimer’s Drug Development Network) with Dr. Varghese John in 2008, leading to the identification of new classes of therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease. His group has developed a new approach to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, and this approach has led to the first description of the reversal of symptoms in patients with MCI and early Alzheimer’s disease, with the MEND protocol.