Marc Suarez-calvet MD, PhD

Marc Suarez-Calvet is a clinical neurologist and neuroscientist at Hospital del Mar (Barcelona) and Group Leader at Barcelonabeta Brain Research Center (BBRC), Fundació Pasqual Maragall. His research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration as well as the development of fluid biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases.

Marc has a unique strong translational background, both as a clinician and as a basic researcher. He studied both Medicine and Biochemistry and became a specialist in Neurology at Hospital de la Santa Creu I Sant Pau (Barcelona). He worked for the Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE) and the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich (Germany), as a member of Prof. Christian Haass's research group. As a clinician, he carried out a visiting fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston (under Prof. Bradley Hyman’s supervision), and at the Dementia Research Center in the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London (under the supervision of Prof. Nick Fox). He is a registered doctor at the General Medical Council in the UK, where he did practice medicine.

Marc has been recently awarded the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant with the project entitled “Identification of age-related Human Blood factors as a therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s disease (HeBe)”.He is now leading the Fluid Biomarkers and Translational Neurology research group at BBRC, which will provide a better understanding of molecular mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease and also provide biomarkers that are relevant for clinical purposes. Altogether, his translational background, both as a clinician and as a basic researcher, is of great asset in nowadays research, where there is an urgent need to transfer basic research findings into meaningful results for patients.