Theme Co-Lead for Neuromuscular Disease, Rare Diseases and Mitochondrial Dysfunction
Volker Straub is Professor of Neuromuscular Genetics at Newcastle University. He trained as a paediatric neurologist at the University of Dussledorf and the University of Essen, Germany. Following this, he completed his PhD on Duchenne muscular dystrophy and took up a postgraduate post in Kevin Campbell’s laboratory at the University of Iowa, on limb girdle muscular dystrophies (LGMD).
In 2003 he joined Newcastle University. He became Deputy Dean for Translational and Clinical Research in 2020 and is the Director of the John Walton Muscular Dystrophy Research Centre and the University's Centre of Research Excellence (NUCoRE) for Rare Disease.
Professor Straub’s interest in muscle diseases is in translational research. He was the co-founder of the EU FP6 funded network of excellence for genetic neuromuscular diseases, TREAT-NMD, which he coordinated with Professor Kate Bushby. He spun out TREAT-NMD Services Ltd. from Newcastle University and sits on it's Board of Directors (www.treat-nmd.org).
His current research involves the application of muscle imaging, the use of zebrafish and mouse models, next generation sequencing and other –omics technologies for the characterization of primary neuromuscular disorders.
Read more about Professor Straub’s research here