Concept
Patrik Brundin (born December 26, 1961 in Malmö, Sweden) is a neuroscientist known for his research on Parkinson's disease (PD) and Huntington's disease. He is currently a Distinguished Scientist and serving as Therapeutic Area Leader for Movement Disorders at F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Pharmaceutical Research and Early Development (pRED). Brundin was educated at Lund University from 1980 to 1992, where he became a full professor in 2000. In 2012, he was appointed the Jay Van Andel Endowed Chair in Parkinson's Research at Van Andel Institute, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Before moving to F. Hoffmann-La Roche in 2022, Brundin held multiple roles at the institute such as the Deputy Chief Scientific Officer, the Director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Science and the Parkinson's Disease Center. Already at age 12, Brundin became interested in studying and finding a cure for PD, a passion influenced by his father's, Bertil Brundin, diagnosis in 1974. While born in Sweden, Brundin spent the majority of his early childhood in the UK, before the family's return to Sweden in 1975. In 1978, Brundin was granted a scholarship to United World College (UWC) of the Atlantic, an international boarding school in Wales, UK. At age 17, he started his research with an Extended Essay on PD as part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. Upon completion of his IB diploma in 1980, he entered medical school at Lund University in Sweden and embarked on an M.D.-Ph.D. program. He completed his Bachelor of Science in Medicine in 1983, a Ph.D. in 1988 under the supervision of Swedish neuroscientist Anders Björklund, and an M.D. in 1992. In 1994, Brundin started his own independent research group at Lund University, Sweden, and he was promoted to full professor of neuroscience at the Faculty of Medicine in 2000. His team moved to the Wallenberg Neuroscience Center at Lund University in 1996. In 2011, Brundin was awarded a European Research Council grant to study disease mechanisms in PD.