Rate My Professor Siddharthan Chandran

Professor Siddharthan Chandran is the MacDonald Professor of Neurology at the University of Edinburgh, affiliated with the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences and Edinburgh Medical School in the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. He serves as Dean of Clinical Medicine since 2021, Head of Edinburgh Medical School since 2022, Director of Edinburgh Neuroscience since 2016, Director of the Euan MacDonald Centre for Motor Neurone Disease Research since 2009, Director of the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic since its inception in 2011, Director of the MS Society Edinburgh Centre for MS Research since 2015, Programme Lead of the UK Dementia Research Institute at Edinburgh since 2017, and Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute since 2023. Chandran obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Science from the University of Southampton in 1989-1990, followed by neurology training at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, University College London, and the University of Cambridge, where he earned a PhD in developmental neurobiology in 2000. Before joining Edinburgh in 2009, he was Consultant Neurologist, University Lecturer, and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

Chandran's research in regenerative neurology bridges clinical practice and laboratory science, focusing on neurodegenerative diseases including multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease. His group conducts clinical studies via specialist clinics and disease registries such as CARE-MND, FutureMS, Speak:Unique, MS-SMART, and MS-STAT3, alongside lab work modeling glial-neuronal interactions, TDP-43 proteinopathies using patient-derived iPS cells, and inflammation-neurodegeneration-repair dynamics in MS mouse models. Key publications include 'Autologous mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of secondary progressive multiple sclerosis: an open-label phase 2a proof-of-concept study' (The Lancet Neurology, 2012), 'Axonal transport of TDP-43 mRNA granules is impaired by ALS-causing mutations' (Neuron, 2014), and 'Characterizing the RNA targets and position-dependent splicing regulation by TDP-43' (Nature Neuroscience, 2011). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences since 2022 and the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 2017.