TUF :: Dr. Wahlestedt

The Unforgettable Fund

F I N D I N G H O P E | Dr. Claes Wahlestedt, Scripps Florida

Dr. Wahlestedt earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Lund (Sweden) in 1984 and 1987 respectively. After post-doctoral training at Kyoto University, Japan, and at Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA, he took a position as Assistant Professor at the Department of Neurology and Neuroscience, Cornell University Medical College in New York City.

He then joined the pharmaceutical industry and from 1993 to 1997 Dr. Wahlestedt served as (founding) Director of Astra-Zeneca Research Center in Montreal, Canada. With a focus on drug discovery for brain disorders and for pain, he grew this Center to over 100 scientists. In Montreal, he was also an Adjunct Professor at McGill University.

In 1997 Dr. Wahlestedt was appointed Professor and started the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics at the Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm (Sweden) and helped recruit some 150 scientists over the following several years. This Center was established in close collaboration with Pharmacia&Upjohn (later Pharmacia Corp. and Pfizer Inc.), and Dr. Wahlestedt remained co-affiliated with this company until 2004.

In 2005, he joined Scripps Florida (Jupiter, FL) as Professor and Director of the Neuroscience Discovery (CNS Disease) Program. In addition to the drug discovery work, his current research focuses on basic aspects of genomics and genetics.

Since 2004, Professor Wahlestedt is also an Adjunct Chief Scientist of Genomic Sciences at the Japanese national research institute, RIKEN, in Tokyo/Yokohama.

In addition to his experience from over a decade as a senior manager in the pharmaceutical industry, Prof. Wahlestedt has served on boards of a number of smaller biotech companies. He has published over 150 peer reviewed original scientific articles as well as many review articles and patents.