Michele Vendruscolo

Professor Vendruscolo is a Founder and Board Member of Wren. He is a Professor of Biophysics and co-director of the Cambridge Centre for Protein Misfolding Diseases at the University of Cambridge. Professor Vendruscolo's research interests are focused on the investigation of the physico-chemical principles of protein homeostasis and their application to the development of therapeutic strategies against neurodegenerative diseases. His methods offer new insights into the manner in which physics and chemistry regulate the biochemical reactions taking place in living organisms, and have led him to clarify the fundamental role that protein solubility has in the maintenance of protein homeostasis. Professor Vendruscolo has demonstrated how these approaches provide a rational basis for diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to combat some of the most prevalent and still incurable protein misfolding diseases. Professor Vendruscolo has received several awards for his work, including the Soft Matter & Biophysical Chemistry award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2013) and the Giuseppe Occhialini Prize from the UK Institute of Physics (2017). Professor Vendruscolo received his PhD in Condensed Matter Physics in 1996 from the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste (Italy). He then spent two years as post-doctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), before moving to Oxford, where he worked in collaboration with Chris Dobson. He later moved to Cambridge and was appointed successively as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, a Lecturer, a Reader and a Professor (2010). Professor Vendruscolo has co-authored over 300 peer-reviewed scientific articles.