Bjarne Udd honoured for extensive research into neuromuscular diseases

The award will be presented at a ceremony in Munich on 16 February 2017 in recognition of Prof. Udd’s unique lifetime achievements related to neuromuscular diseases. He has been conducting research into these diseases since the early 1980s. In 2004, he established the Tampere Neuromuscular Centre at the university hospital, and he still leads it.

- Looking for new truths instead of just settling with the established ones is what has propelled me forward over the years,’ he says.

He first became interested in neuromuscular diseases when working as a neurologist at Vaasa Central Hospital.

- It’s nearly 40 years since I first encountered a patient suffering from “something strange” that was not described in the handbooks,’ says Prof. Udd.

His clinical research led in 1992 to a doctoral thesis on tibial muscular dystrophy, a disease not previously known to exist. Ten years later, it was discovered that the disorder was caused by a mutation in the titin gene, which produces the largest protein in humans – and in all of nature. Titin has an essential function as the ‘backbone’ of all the muscle cells in our body, and it has turned out to be connected to many distinct muscle diseases, including heart diseases, Prof. Udd explains. Further research initiatives have, among other achievements, led to descriptions of more than a dozen other previously unknown neuromuscular diseases.

The EU very recently designated the Tampere Neuromuscular Centre as a European centre of reference for neuromuscular diseases.

Contact point for further information:
Professor Bjarne Udd, tel. +358 40 700 9208