Graeme Bilbe is the Global Head for the Neuroscience Disease Area, based at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research site in Basel, Switzerland. In this capacity he is responsible for research into neurodegenerative disease (including Alzheimer’s disease) and  psychiatry (anxiety and depression).

Graeme joined Novartis’ predecessory company, Ciba-Geigy, in 1989 as a postodoctoral fellow and became a Lab Leader in 1990, where he lead a group studying bone resorption. In 1994, his lab was one of the first to clone and characterize human cathepsin K, an important protease implicated in the bone resorption process and also produced by breast cancer cells and cell lines, contributing to the metastasis of these cancers to bone. During this time he also made significant contributions to understanding the biology of Transforming Growth Factor-beta, as well as leading one of the first groups to clone human iNOS cDNA from human cartilage tissue. Since the 1996 merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz to form Novartis, Graeme’s work has focused more specifically on diseases of the nervous system, serving as Scientific Expert, Head of the Mental Health Unit and, finally, as the Global Head of the Neuroscience Disease Area.

Graeme studied Zoology and Biochemistry at the University of Nottingham, England and was awarded a B.Sc. (Hons. II(i)) degree in 1981. His Ph.D. project, in the lab of Prof. E. A. Barnard (Department of Biochemistry, Imperial College, London), was supported by a Collaborative Award Studentship for Science and Engineering with G. D. Searle (High Wycombe, England). During his studies he pioneered the use of the Xenopus oocyte expression system for expressing many types of neuronal receptor including GABA-A, AMPA/Kainate, glycine and acetylcholine receptors. His postdoctoral work prior to joining Ciba-Geigy was in the lab of Prof. H. C. Schaller at the Center for Molecular Biology (Heidelberg, Germany), where he studied the function of Head Activator, a neuropeptide isolated from the coelenterate Hydra.