Oliver Bandmann, MD, PhD, received his undergraduate medical degree from the University of Munich, Germany, followed by a PhD in genetics of parkinsonian disorders at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, under the supervision of Prof. C.D. Marsden and Prof. N.W. Wood. Following the completion of his specialist training in neurology in the Department of Neurology, University of Marburg, Germany, he accepted a position at the University of Sheffield, UK, and has since been appointed Professor of Movement Disorders Neurology. His research group was the first to perform a drug screen in the tissues of people with Parkinson's disease (PD), which led to the identification of ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) as a promising compound for future disease-modifying therapy trials in PD. His group also established several pre-clinical models to study the effects of PD-associated gene defects in vivo. This led to the identification of protein TIGAR (tp53 inducible glycolysis inhibitor and apoptosis regulator) as a promising target for disease modification.