Professor Michael Hutchinson

Newman Clinical Research Professor at University College Dublin, Ireland

I have been a Consultant Neurologist for 35 years, most of that time as a full-time clinician with research as an add-on activity. My main research interest was multiple sclerosis, but since starting a botulinum toxin clinic in 1988, I have been increasingly interested in adult onset primary torsion dystonia (AOPTD). I now do 20% clinical out-patient work and 80% research, mainly in dystonia. We have a very active multi-disciplinary group with a research network involving, among others, Laurie Ozelius in New York and Mark Edwards in London. Our work focuses on temporal discrimination as a mediational endophenotype, and using this to elucidate the pathogenic mechanisms of AOPTD and eventually gene finding. I am proud of my three publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, our ability to network internationally, and the increasing recognition, by funding and invited lectures, of our work in dystonia. We have built up a large bank of clinically well-characterized DNA samples from our sporadic AOPTD population and multiplex AOPTD families and are willing to share this resource for future multi-centre studies.