Arpan, who is a practising consultant neurologist, was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (2004-2007), and New College, Oxford (2007-2010), where he graduated with a first class (BA) and Distinction (BM BCh), respectively. His undergraduate research supervisors in neurophysiology were Dr James Fraser and Professor Christopher Huang, and the late Professor Roger Carpenter, and he enjoyed Medical Electives in AIIMS (with Professor Madhuri Behari, New Delhi), PGIMER (with Emeritus Professor Sudesh Prabhakar and Professor Vivek Lal, Chandigarh) and Toronto (with Professors Anthony Lang and Robert Chen). Arpan received numerous prizes during his University years, including: the Schuldham Plate, Ackroyd Scholarship, Tucker Prize, Anne Pearson Prize, Physiological Society Prize, Radcliffe Infirmary Prize for Medicine, and Brian Johnson Pathology Prize. He was an academic foundation year doctor in the East of England deanery, where he undertook scientific training and research under the mentorship of Professor James Rowe (Cambridge). He subsequently secured an NIHR academic clinical fellowship under the mentorship of emeritus Professor Peter Brown (Oxford), alongside run-through neurology training in the Oxford Deanery. He completed his final years of neurology senior registrar training at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London in 2024, and moved to the MRC PPU to initiate an exciting programme of research focused on unravelling the role of cell signalling in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/motor neuron disease.

His scientific interest into the molecular mechanisms underlying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was piqued during his MRC/MND Association Lady Edith Wolfson Clinical Research Training Fellowship, conducted at the UK Dementia Research Institute at University of Edinburgh (co-supervised by Professor Siddharthan Chandran and Professor Giles Hardingham). He was awarded his PhD in 2022, following his thesis focussed on dysfunctional axonal homeostasis in C9ORF72 human induced pluripotent stem cell derived motor neurons; he demonstrated a causal link between axonal dysfunction and mitochondrial bioenergetic failure. He received the Charles Symonds Association of British Neurologists Prize (2019) for the best platform presentation, and the CURE-ND Prize for the best talk delivered at the Paris Brain Institute in 2023. Indeed, he has contributed to a number of prominent Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement events, most recently as a co-chair and speaker at the British Neuroscience Association’s Festival of Science symposium on motor neuron disease, in Brighton in 2023. He was commissioned by the Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet Neurology to curate the cover-artwork resulting from The Cajal Embroidery Project and write accompanying Focal Point articles for the 12 issues of 2021.

Arpan is an active member of the ACORD Fellows Academy, interested in innovative trial design for neurodegenerative disorders, hosted by the MRC Clinical Trials Unit, UCL. He was appointed to the Scientific Advisory Panel of MND Scotland in 2024. He is passionate about the importance of prioritising the mentorship of early-career clinician-scientists and researchers, and is a Trustee of ‘Physics Partners’, which is a dynamic educational charity providing hands-on training and support for non-specialist and newly qualified physics teachers in state secondary schools.

Our lab studies cell signalling mechanisms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a devastating neurological disorder, characterised by the degeneration of motor neurons, without an effective disease-modifying treatment. Major advances in genetics have uncovered a plethora of ALS variants in genes linked to cell signalling, for example, NEK1 and TBK1. In the ALS field, there has been insufficient dedicated research on kinases, despite selective motor neuron degeneration being linked to the aberrant regulation of kinases. Inhibition of the Src/c-Abl pathway in multiple models of ALS (and via screening based on a survival assay of human stem cell-derived motor neurons from people with ALS) suggests that kinases closely regulate shared downstream processes in ALS pathogenesis. Moreover, aberrant phosphorylation of various ALS-related proteins (e.g., TDP-43 [known to be phosphorylated by CK1δ] and FUS) by kinases could affect their cellular localisation and, consequently, their biological function.

Arpan plans to decipher the biology in human motor neurons that is impacted by the NEK1 protein kinase, which is one of the commoner mutations underlying ALS. He plans to undertake experiments to define the key physiological phosphorylation targets of NEK1 in motor neurons and understand the function that phosphorylation of these targets plays. He will also undertake translational studies to investigate whether defective phosphorylation of NEK1 targets is observed in sporadic ALS patient biosamples and whether these targets can be employed as future biomarkers to stratify NEK1-driven ALS. Overall, Arpan’s ambition as a practising clinical neurologist is to make fundamental discoveries leading to transformative knowledge and the development of key reagents that will help advance our understanding of ALS—its diagnosis and treatment—in the future.

Arpan would be delighted to hear from anyone interested in joining his laboratory, situated in a Unit where all PIs share an ethos that prioritises personal wellbeing and career development, and a positive research culture. Informal enquiries are welcomed via email.