Medical Genetics

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics, University of Cambridge

EDUCATION AND TRAINING:
After completing his basic medical training and housejobs, David Rubinsztein did a BSc(Med) Hons and PhD in the Medical Research Council/University of Cape Town Unit for the Cell Biology of Atherosclerosis. He came to Cambridge in 1993 as a senior registrar in Genetic Pathology. During this period, he started working on Huntington’s disease and developed an independent research group.

In 1997, David Rubinsztein acquired his Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training and was awarded a 6 year Glaxo Wellcome Fellowship.

HONORS AND AWARDS:
In 2001 he was awarded an MRC Programme grant with Professor Steve Brown to identify and analyse modifier genes in Huntington’s disease and a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellowship to further understand the biology of diseases caused by codon reiteration mutations. The Wellcome Senior Fellowship and the MRC grants were renewed in 2006. Rubinsztein was recently awarded a Wellcome Trust Principal Fellowship.

David Rubinsztein was appointed to a Personal Readership at the University of Cambridge in 2003 and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004. In 2005 he was promoted to Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics at the University of Cambridge (personal chair).

He was awarded the Graham Bull Prize for Clinical Science by the Royal College of Physicians in 2007 and was elected as a member of EMBO in 2011.

PUBLICATIONS:
Dr Rubinsztein has been an author on more than 260 scientific papers, including recent studies in Nature Chemical Biology (2007, 2008), Molecular Cell (2009, 2011), Cell (2010, 2011), Science Translational Medicine (2010), and Nature Cell Biology (2010, 2011).

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
His research, which is based in the Department of Medical Genetics in the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, is focused on trying to understand the processes underlying the pathology in Huntington’s disease and related conditions associated with intracellular aggregates. He is trying to develop therapeutic strategies for these conditions and has a major focus studying the roles of autophagy in neurodegeneration.