The UBC Hospital Clinic for Alzheimer Disease and Related Disorders (UBCH CARD) announced this week that Dr. Haakon Nygaard has been appointed to the role of Medical Manager of the clinic. Located within the Djavad Mowafaghian Center for Brain Health at the UBC Hospital, the clinic was under the leadership of Dr. Howard Feldman until his departure from UBC in March.
Dr. Nygaard joined the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health as a clinician-scientist in 2014, and through the generous support of Charles Fipke, was the inaugural holder of the Fipke endowed chair in Alzheimer research. Dr. Nygaard brings a strong clinical and research expertise to the CARD Clinical Team.
“I’m very honoured to assume the leadership of UBCH CARD, recognizing the enduring impact of Dr. Lynn Beattie who founded the clinic and directed its steady expansion, and Dr. Howard Feldman who brought international recognition to our clinical and research programs,” says Dr. Nygaard. “We are entering a new era of dementia diagnosis and treatment, and I look forward continue building an academic dementia program delivering world-class clinical care driven by research.”
“The Centre offers an unprecedented opportunity to create an academic environment where clinicians and scientists across disciplines share ideas, and work towards a common goal of a future without dementia,” Dr. Nygaard says. “I cannot wait to see how far we can go together.”
Prior coming to UBC, Dr. Nygaard was an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Yale University School of Medicine. He founded and co-directed the Yale Memory Clinic, and has a well-established research record with many established research grants and initiatives to his credit. In addition to his laboratory which focuses on disease modeling and novel therapeutics in dementia, he is a Principal Investigator of a $13M NIH-funded program to repurpose the experimental cancer drug saracatinib for use in Alzheimer disease. The program is now mid-way through enrolment for a Phase 2a proof-of-concept trial across more than 20 sites in North America.
“It is a very exciting time to be involved in dementia research, with many novel therapeutic approaches being developed. UBC has a decades-long reputation of seminal contributions to dementia research, and the hope is that through close collaboration, more of these discoveries will reach our clinic, eventually benefiting the tens of thousands of patients in BC suffering from dementia.”
