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Associate Professor Michael Woodward

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Associate Professor Michael Woodward

AUSTIN HEALTH

Brief info

Director of Dementia Research and senior clinician, Memory Clinic, Austin Health, Heidelberg, VIC.
Associate Professor Michael Woodward is Head of Dementia Research and a senior clinician in the Memory Clinic at Austin Health in Melbourne, Victoria. He is a specialist in geriatric medicine with major interests in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other dementias. He is Principal Investigator for numerous research trials of new therapies for AD and related disorders. He is Past President of the AC4R – the Australasian Consortium of Centres for Clinical Cognitive Research that brings together researchers into therapeutic agents for dementia (now called Dementia Trials Australia). He was a member of the Alzheimer’s Australia Victoria Board, then appointed their chief medical advisor and chaired their research foundation, and now is a Board member of the national Dementia Australia Research Foundation, as well as one of the three Honorary Medical Advisors to Dementia Australia.
Michael Woodward’s publication record includes 160 original research and review articles, including two in the New England Journal of Medicine, and he has now delivered over 500 professional addresses and over 100 talks to the general public, as well as regularly discussing his medical passions in all forms of media. He was awarded his MD on the overlap between the dementia syndromes and how memory clinic data bases contribute to our understanding of the dementias. More recent research interests have focussed on characterizing the frontal (dysexecutive) variant of Alzheimer’s Disease. He is a Fellow of the Australian Association of Gerontology (AAG), of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine (ANZSGM), of the Australian Wound Management Association (AWMA- now Wounds Australia) and of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and has long served each of these professional bodies, including being President of AWMA for 4 years and of AAG (Vic) for 6 years. He was vice then for 6 years Chair of the Committee for Physician Training that oversaw the training of all RACP advanced and basic trainees, and now Chairs the Accreditation Committee of that College, responsible for accrediting all Australian Basic Physician Training sites in adult medicine.
On Australia Day 2016 he was honoured with the award of Membership of the Order of Australia (AM) for his work in dementia and geriatric medicine, his contribution to these numerous professional bodies and his body of publications and other writings.

CURING ALZHEIMER’S: BEYOND AMYLOID!

– Lecture 30 minutes followed by 10 minutes Q & A

The clinical landscape for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has historically been dominated by the “amyloid cascade hypothesis.” However, the modest efficacy and safety concerns associated with newly approved anti-amyloid immunotherapies have intensified the search for alternative biological targets. Indeed, the research pipeline has reached unprecedented diversity targeting distinct disease processes.  This lecture will attempt to review these non-amyloid strategies, including tau-targeting therapies (e.g. antisense oligonucleotides and vaccines), neuroinflammation and vascular health.  Consideration will also be given to the shift towards precision medicine, acknowledging the considerable comorbid pathologies that coexist in patients with dementia.