简介
BIOSKETCH
Professor Hampel obtained his MD and PhD at the University of Munich, Germany. He also holds an MSc in hospital management from Cologne University, Germany and an MA from Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. After training at the University of Munich, he moved to Washington D.C. in 1995 for a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute on Aging (NIA), Laboratory of Neurosciences in Bethesda, Md. (supervisor: Stanley I. Rapoport, MD) focusing on structural & functional neuroimaging of the aging and Alzheimer's disease brain. In 1997 he became founding director of the Alzheimer Memorial Center at the University of Munich where he was appointed as Professor of Psychiatry in 2005. In 2006 he moved to Dublin and was appointed Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. During this time he was a PI at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN). In 2010 he was appointed Professor, Chair and Head of Department of Psychiatry, head of the Alzheimer Research Center and co-director of the Brain Imaging Center (BIC) at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. From 2013-2019 he was appointed Professor and AXA Research Fund & Sorbonne University Excellence Chair at Sorbonne University, Institut de la Mémoire et de la Maladie d’Alzheimer (IM2A), Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière (ICM), at the Department of Neurology, Hôpital Pitié Salpêtrière in Paris, France.
Professor Hampel was PI and coordinator of major funded clinical and translational research programs in the area of AD and other neurodegenerative diseases, has won numerous awards and holds 12 patents for his research.
In 2019 he joined Eisai Inc. and became Chief Medical Officer, Senior Vice President, (CMO), Head of Global Medical Affairs, and a member of the company’s Executive Committee for the Americas, Neurology, Nutley, NJ, USA. As CMO, he is responsible for leading Eisai’s medical affairs strategy and technical expertise in neurology.
In 2026 Harald Hampel joined Bristol Myers Squibb as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Head of Medical Affairs, Neuroscience (Princeton, NJ).
He served as Senior Associate Editor of the internationally leading Alzheimer journal of the US Alzheimer Association - Alzheimer's & Dementia. He was founding president of the Alzheimer Precision Medicine Initiative (APMI), it's cohort program (APMI-CP), he heads the international Cholinergic Systems Working Group and is member of the Neurodegeneration Precision Medicine Initiative (NPMI).
RESEARCH INTERESTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Translational discovery, development and validation of novel treatments (more than 50 clinical trials) and multimodal biomarker candidates using biochemical (blood, plasma & CSF) and neuroimaging methods in mono- and multi-site studies for risk assessment, mapping progression, prediction, early detection, clinical diagnosis and classification of neurodegenerative diseases (i.e., Alzheimer's disease [AD]) across all disease stages (preclinical to prodromal to dementia).
Detection of genetic protection and risk variants (several genome-wide associated susceptibility genes) of autosomal dominant and sporadic AD within large-scale international research networks.
Neurochemical biomarker work focused on inflammatory markers (i.e. TNF receptor complex, the IL-6 receptor complex), total and phosphorylated tau protein (s199, thr181, thr231), abeta-antibodies and abeta-oligomers (correlation with cognitive decline), TACE, BACE1 functional proteins, microvascular markers (brain, CSF, plasma). Validation of biomarkers against post-mortem histochemical findings (i.e., p-tau thr231 correlation with regional brain tangle density).
His group has introduced and systematically validated (from mono-center methodological studies to multi-site validation) various new MRI-biomarkers, i.e., of limbic system, brain stem (LC), basal forebrain changes validated against post-mortem obtained brain scans.
Multivariate analysis tools were developed to track white matter changes, cortical thickness analysis, voxel-based DTI analysis of the whole brain (including large-scale multi-center validation studies), demonstrating a specific AD pattern of fractional anisotropy and identifying anatomical neural networks using advanced tractography within the brain. Voxel- and deformation-based morphometry.
For the functional MRI assessment, he developed a connectivity-related approach that showed brain changes in subjects at risk of AD before the onset of dementia.
Metabolic imaging focused on studies at rest and activation using FDG- and Amyloid-PET tracers. Other neuroimaging research focused on the understanding how the brain constructs networks of interacting regions to perform cognitive tasks, especially those associated with memory and attention, and how these networks are altered during aging and neurodegenerative brain diseases. Big data science and AI.
