Academic Biography

Prof. Dr. Hoa Huu Phuc Nguyen is a board certified Clinical Geneticist and Director of the Department of Human Genetics at RUB. He has more than 15 years of experience in care, counselling and research of genetically caused disorders. His main research focus is on neurodegenerative diseases, in particular PolyQ diseases. His research aims to elucidate the pathomechanisms in HD and other PolyQ diseases; his major recent initiatives were to generate and characterize transgenic rat and mouse models of these diseases and use them to understand cellular mechanisms of neuronal dysfunction and neurodegeneration. Further areas of research involve the search for genetic modifiers of age at onset in HD patients to identify potential therapeutic targets and the development and testing of new potential disease-modifying therapies in cell and animal models with a long-term goal to bring them into the clinic. He has been coordinator of several international, European and national funded consortia.