Professor Ed Wild's Group

Professor Ed Wild graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge University in 2001 and has worked in clinical neurology and Huntington’s disease (HD) research since 2005. They have authored 7 book chapters and over 80 peer-reviewed publications.

They serve on the Medical Advisory Panel of the Huntington’s Disease Association, the Association of British Neurologists Neurogenetics Advisory Panel, and the Translational Neurology Panel of the European Academy of Neurology. They are Associate Editor of the Journal of Huntington’s Disease and advise the steering committee to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Huntington’s disease. They are the co-Lead Facilitator of the European Huntington’s Disease Network‘s Biomarkers Working Group.

Professor Wild believes that scientists have a duty to make their work accessible and understandable to the people who need it most. In 2010, they co-founded HDBuzz, an online source of reliable, impartial, easy-to-understand information about HD research. HDBuzz is now the world’s foremost HD research news source. In recognition of this, they were awarded the 2012 Michael Wright Community Leadership Award by the Huntington Society of Canada and the 2014 Research Award by the Huntington’s Disease Society of America.

• ORCID: 0000-0002-6921-7887

Our research

Our research focuses on Huntington’s disease, a fatal, autosomal dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disease that usually begins in mid-adult life and produces cognitive, behavioural and motor decline.

No cure or disease-slowing treatment exists for HD, but uniquely among prevalent neurodegenerative diseases, Huntington’s disease (HD) is fully penetrant and monogenic. This has enabled the development of many promising therapeutic options designed to target known pathogenic pathways in HD.

The team studies cerebrospinal fluid for the purpose of understanding the pathobiology of HD and the development of meaningful biomarkers to facilitate and empower clinical trials of new therapeutic agents.

Selected publications

• Rodrigues F.B., Byrne L.M., Tortelli R., Johnson E.B., Wijeratne P.A., Arridge M., De Vita E., Ghazaleh N., Houghton R., Furby H., Alexander D.C., Tabrizi S.J., Schobel S., Scahill R.I., Heslegrave A., Zetterberg H., and Wild E.J., 2020. Mutant huntingtin and neurofilament light have distinct longitudinal dynamics in Huntington’s disease. Science translational medicine, 12(574), p.eabc2888. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.abc2888
• Tabrizi S.J., Flower M.D., Ross C.A. and Wild E.J., 2020. Huntington disease: new insights into molecular pathogenesis and therapeutic opportunities. Nature Reviews Neurology, 16(10), pp.529-546. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-020-0389-4
• Scahill R.I., Zeun P., Osborne-Crowley K., Johnson E.B., Gregory S., Parker C., Lowe J., Nair A., O’Callaghan C., Langley C., Papoutsi M., McColgan P., Estevez-Fraga C., Fayer K., Wellington H., Rodrigues F.B., Byrne L.M., Heselgrave A., Hyare H., Sampaio C., Zetterberg H., Zhang H., Wild E.J., Rees G., Robbins T.W., Sahakian B.J., Langbehn D., and Tabrizi S.J., 2020. Biological and clinical characteristics of gene carriers far from predicted onset in the Huntington’s disease Young Adult Study (HD-YAS): a cross-sectional analysis. The Lancet Neurology, 19(6), pp.502-512. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(20)30143-5
• Gregory S., Johnson E., Byrne L.M., Rodrigues F.B., Henderson A., Moss J., Thomas D., Zhang H., De Vita E., Tabrizi S.J., Rees G., Scahill R.I., and Wild E.J., 2020. Characterizing white matter in Huntington’s disease. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, 7(1), pp.52-60. https://doi.org/10.1002/mdc3.12866
• Tabrizi S.J., Leavitt B.R., Landwehrmeyer G.B., Wild E.J., Saft C., Barker R.A., Blair N.F., Craufurd D., Priller J., Rickards H., Rosser A., Kordasiewicz H.B., Czech C., Swayze E.E., Norris D.A., Baumann T., Gerlach I., Schobel S.A., Paz E., Smith A.V., Bennett C.F., and Lane R.M.,  2019. Targeting huntingtin expression in patients with Huntington’s disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 380(24), pp.2307-2316. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1900907

Members of the lab

• Ms Fiona Kinsella
• Dr Opeyemi Kinyomi
• Dr Gail Owen
• Dr Katarzyna Schubert
• Miss Emilia Severs
• Miss Mara Terres Rodriguez