DR. CLAUDE MICHEL WISCHIK, PROFESSOR

Professor Claude M Wischik holds the prestigious Chair in Mental Health at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and serves as the Executive Chairman of TauRx Pharmaceuticals. Originating from France and having spent his formative years in Australia, Professor Wischik embarked on his higher education journey in mathematics and philosophy at the University of Adelaide. He later transitioned to the medical domain, excelling at Flinders University of South Australia where he graduated with First Class Honors. In 1980, with a Commonwealth Scholarship, Professor Wischik ventured to Cambridge, UK, to pursue a PhD under the mentorship of the late Professor Sir Martin Roth and Professor Sir Aaron Klug at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. It was here that Professor Wischik made groundbreaking discoveries in Alzheimer’s disease research, including the structure of the Paired Helical Filament (PHF) and the identification of Tau protein as a major component.

Under Professor Wischik’s leadership at the Cambridge Bank Laboratory, his team discovered the first pharmaceutically viable Tau Aggregation Inhibitor (TAI), marking a significant advancement in the potential treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Through their clinico-pathological studies, Professor Wischik and his team underscored the vital relationship between Tau aggregation and the progression of clinical dementia, well ahead of overt tangle pathology, and highlighted the minimal correlation between amyloid pathology and dementia, especially in the initial stages.