Bart de Strooper

Bart De Strooper is Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Leuven, KU Leuven, Belgium. He is also director of the Center for the Biology of Disease at VIB, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology. The Center for the Biology of Disease counts more than 220 scientists.

Bart De Strooper’s scientific work is focused on the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms that underlie Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. His major findings are the role of presenilin in the proteolysis of the amyloid precursor protein and Notch, the role of PARL in mitochondrial apoptosis, and the cell biology of gamma-secretase and intramembrane proteolysis.

He received his M.D. in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1991 from KU Leuven. He did a postdoc in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in the laboratory of Carlos Dotti.

Together with Christian Haass, Bart De Strooper received the Potamkin Award of the American Academy of Neurology in 2002. Other awards include the 2003 Alois Alzheimer Award of the Deutscher Gesellschaft für Gerontopsychiatrie und psychotherapie, the Joseph Maisin Prize in 2005 for fundamental biomedical sciences, awarded by the FWO Flanders every 5 years, and the 2008 Metlife Foundation Award for medical research.