Visiting Professor: Pedro Piccardo

Pedro Piccardo has been made a Visiting Professor.

Pedro Piccardo was born in Argentina in 1954 and graduated from the University of Buenos Aires’ School of Medicine in 1979.

In 1985 he was awarded a Fogarty Fellowship to conduct research on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) at the National Institutes of Health, US.

He became tenured Associate Professor of Pathology at Indiana University, US.

He was selected to serve as a member of the TSE Advisory Committee to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and consultant to the Harvard School of Public Health on TSEs.

He joined the FDA in 2003 as Chief TSE Pathogenesis Program.

He was among the first to demonstrate the localization of cellular prion protein (PrP) in the human brain and has described novel phenotypes of TSEs and related diseases.

In collaboration with researchers at Indiana University and Washington University, he has studied pathogenic mechanisms in TSEs, including the accumulation of neurotoxic but non-infectious misfolded PrP in brains of animals.

In collaboration with investigators at the Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh, he has described the first animal model in which cerebral PrP amyloidosis develops without TSE.

He has received awards from Argentina’s Academy of Medicine, the American Association of Neuropathologists, and the US Government.