Sarah Tabrizi

Professor Sarah Tabrizi, MD PhD FMedSci FRS, is Professor of Clinical Neurology & Neurogenetics at University College London (UCL) and serves as Joint Head of the Department of Neurodegenerative Disease within the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. She is also Founding Director of the UCL Huntington’s Disease Centre, co-established with Professor Gill Bates in 2016.

Education and Training

• BSc (First-class Honours) in Biochemistry – Heriot-Watt University, 1986
• MB ChB with Gold Medal (top student) – University of Edinburgh, 1992
• PhD – University College London, 2000 (MRC Clinical Training Fellowship)
• Membership & Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians – 1995 & 2007

Research Focus
Sarah leads an internationally recognised programme that integrates fundamental lab science on cellular mechanisms of neurodegeneration in Huntington’s disease (HD) with large-scale translational research aimed at disease-modifying therapies. Her group pioneered the concept that innate immune dysregulation drives HD pathogenesis, developed the first blood-based assay for mutant huntingtin protein, and spearheaded the landmark TRACK-HD and Track-On HD longitudinal studies. These initiatives identified neurobiological changes occurring up to 20 years before predicted clinical onset and established novel outcome measures now used in global phase 1/2 HD gene-silencing trials.

Clinical Trial Leadership & Therapeutic Development
Over the past two decades she has led more than 30 interventional clinical trials in HD, including the world-first successful phase 1/2b antisense-oligonucleotide trial reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (2019). She currently chairs or advises multiple Scientific Advisory Boards for industry developing gene-targeting and nucleic-acid therapies.

Honours and Awards

• Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) – 2024
• Arvid Carlsson Award – Lund University, 2023
• MRC Millennium Medal – Medical Research Council, 2022
• Osler Medal – Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland, 2022
• Alexander Morison Medal – Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2019
• Yahr Award – World Congress of Neurology, 2019
• International Cotzias Prize – Spanish Society of Neurology, 2018
• Leslie Gehry Brenner Prize for Innovation in Science – Hereditary Disease Foundation, 2017
• Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) – 2014

Teaching, Mentorship & Education
Since 2003 Sarah has supervised 37 PhD and MD students to completion. She lectures and mentors across six UCL Master’s programmes (Clinical Neuroscience, Advanced Neuroimaging, Dementia, Translational Neurology, Clinical Neurology, and Neuroscience) and delivers invited teaching for the Movement Disorders Society, European Academy of Neurology, and Federation of European Neuroscience courses. At UCL Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust she trains undergraduate and postgraduate medical students in neurogenetics and neurology.

Leadership & Service
She co-founded the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Huntington’s disease (2010), sits on expert panels for the UK HD Association, European HD Network, NIH/NINDS and the MRC Nucleic Acid Therapies Accelerator, and is Principal Investigator at the UK Dementia Research Institute Hub at UCL.