Edward Wild (neuroscientist)

Career

Wild studied medicine at Christ's College, Cambridge. In his early career, he studied and published on the neurological phenomenon of déjà vu. He undertook a PhD, supervised by Professor Sarah Tabrizi, at the UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, during which he published research on biomarkers for Huntington's disease using magnetic resonance imaging measures of brain atrophy and biochemical analysis of blood. Wild and Tabrizi continue to work together at the UCL Huntington's Disease Centre.

Wild and colleagues described a novel pathogenic pathway of immune activation in Huntington's which later became the basis of clinical trials of immune-targeted therapies. In 2015, he published the first successful detection and quantification of mutant huntingtin protein (the known cause of Huntington's) in human cerebrospinal fluid, using a novel 'single-molecule counting' immunoassay. This finding was noted as a 'research highlight' by Nature Reviews Neurology and won Wild the Huntington Study group 'Insight of the Year' award in 2015. He has also published novel genetic causes of 'phenocopy' syndromes that mimic Huntington's disease.

Wild's research since 2017 has focused on the potential of neurofilament light and mutant huntingtin protein as biomarkers for Huntington's disease onset and progression. His work has shown that NFL has better prognostic value in Huntington's disease, but that mutant huntingtin might be a valuable marker for early and sensitive detection of change in clinical huntingtin-lowering trials. He was a senior investigator in the clinical programme studying the antisense oligonucleotide tominersen to lower mutant huntingtin production in HD, and gave the first dose of the drug to a patient in 2015.

He serves on the Medical Advisory Panel of the UK Huntington's Disease Association, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Huntington's Disease, the Association of British Neurologists Neurogenetics Advisory Panel, and the Translational Neurology Panel of the European Academy of Neurology. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the European Huntington's Disease Network and Co-lead facilitator of the Network's Biomarkers Working Group. He is a founder member of the advisory panel to the UK All-party parliamentary group on Huntington's disease.

Wild was a senior investigator on the trial program testing AMT130, an AAV5 gene therapy given by intracranial injection. In September 2025 he announced topline results showing it had become the first successful disease-slowing treatment for HD, delaying clinical progression of HD by 75%.

He was promoted to Professor of Neurology in October 2020, in the UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences. As of September 2022, Wild has authored 7 book chapters and 150 peer-reviewed publications with over 12,000 citations.