Novak Michal

Biography

Michal Novák DVM, PhD is a neuroscientist, immunologist, and educator. In 1999, together with Martin Cabadaj, they founded a biotech company AXON Neuroscience with the mission to discover and deliver disease modifying immunotherapeutics for patients suffering from Alzheimer´s disease. He is currently a professor and founding director of the Institute of Neuroimmunology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He has devoted twenty-six years of his career to the research of Alzheimer's disease. He published more than 135 research papers which have been cited more than 3,500 times. A major part of his work has been performed at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK and at ISAS Trieste, Italy. He was a member of international research teams led by Nobel Prize laureates Sir Aaron Klug, Cesar Milstein, and John Walker. The group discovered that pathologically modified brain protein tau constitutes one of the major hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease – neurofibrillary tangles. Prof. Novák was International Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Maryland, USA (1995 – 2000) and received grant awards from Human Frontiers Science Organization, Strasbourg, France, and from Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is also a Founding President of the Slovak Alzheimer’s Society and a co-founder and President of the Slovak Society for Neuroscience. From 2008 to 2012, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS). He is also a co-founder and a board member of the largest global research initiative aimed at tackling the challenges of neurodegenerative diseases, EU Joint Programme - Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND).

Research Interest

Alzheimer´s disease, Neurosciences.