
Professor Dr. Hilmar Bading
Introduction and CV

Hilmar Bading is Professor of Neurobiology and has held the Chair of Neurobiology at Heidelberg University since 2001. He studied medicine at Heidelberg University and earned his doctorate at the Max-Planck-Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, then worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin and at Harvard Medical School in Boston (USA). In 1993 he became head of a research group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (UK).
Hilmar Bading has headed Heidelberg University’s Institute of Neurobiology since 2001 and the Interdisciplinary Center for Neurosciences (IZN) since 2006. He is also the founder of the biotech start-up FundaMental Pharma GmbH and of the Foundation BrainAid. Hilmar Bading studies calcium signaling and NMDA receptor functions with a particular focus on neurodegenerative processes and neuroprotective mechanisms.
He discovered that brain activity can prevent the death of nerve cells and identified endogenous neuroprotective proteins. Based on the identification of a cell death-inducing protein complex consisting of extrasynaptic NMDA receptors and the ion channel TRPM4, he developed a pharmacologically novel class of neuroprotective molecules (‘TwinF interface inhibitors') that can halt neurodegenerative processes such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s Disease and Huntington’s Disease.
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He has also been working on the molecular basis of learning and memory. In particular, he studies calcium as an important information transmitter in the dialogue between the synapse and the nucleus that regulates neuronal gene expression and the consolidation of memory.