Dr William Scotton MBioch, PhD, FRCP

• FRCP (2025)
• PhD – UCL (2023)
• MBBS – King’s College School of Medicine (2011)
• MBioch – University of Oxford (2003)

Professional Bodies

• Association of British Neurologists
• Movement Disorder Society
• International Society for Frontotemporal Dementias

Dr Scotton completed his initial degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Cell biology at the University of Oxford (1st, Gibbs proxime accessit). After 3 years working at OC&C strategy consultants in the ULK and Deloitte in Australia, he went on to study Graduate Medicine at Kings College School of Medicine (MBBS with distinction) qualifying in 2011. During his time at KCL he worked on the epidemiology of MND under the supervision of Professor Ammar Al-Chalabi publishing in high impact journals including Brain. He completed the NIHR Neuroscience Academic Foundation (Neuroscience) training programme at Addenbrookes hospital, followed by an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship (Neurology) in Birmingham (2015-2018). He was awarded a prestigious Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD fellowship at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology (2019-2023) under the supervision of Professor Sir John Hardy and Professor Jonathan Rohrer focused on disease progression and genetic risk factors in the primary tauopathies, before completing subspecialist Neurology training in the West Midlands in 2023.

As part of his PhD, he established the Pick’s Disease International Consortium, and international collaboration to investigate the genetic risk factors for developing this unique 3-repeat tauopathy. Findings from this study have been published in Lancet Neurology. Alongside this he developed image-based machine learning models to stage and subtype patients with 4-repeat tauopathies (PSP and CBS) to better stratify this heterogenous group of patients using baseline MRI imaging with publications in Brain Communications.

Dr Scotton has recently established the West Midland Initiative for Neurodegeneration (We-MIND) at the University of Birmingham, a cross-speciality clinical-academic collaboration between neurologists and psychiatrists, funded by the Mason Legacy Bequest, the NIHR Regional Research Delivery Network, the PSP Association and the MSA Trust. This will create a clinical trials and research registry initially focused on frontotemporal lobar degeneration syndromes (Atypical parkinsonian syndromes including PSP, CBS and MSA, FTD and FTD–MND) with planned expansion to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, to enable earlier biomarker driven diagnosis and pathology-based stratification, and to generate robust regional estimates of incidence, prevalence and outcomes in the West Midlands’ large, ethnically diverse population.

• BSc Biomedical Science (Years 1-3)

Dr Scotton supervises Masters and PhD students in projects relating to:

• Neurodegenerative diseases - atypical Parkinsonian disorders (PSP, CBS, MSA), FTD / MND-FTD, Parkinson’s disease and early onset Alzheimer’s disease
• Fluid and imaging biomarkers - diagnostic and disease progression
• Genetics of neurodegenerative disease
• Clinical Neurology

If interested in undertaking research in Dr Scotton’s laboratory, please contact him directly: w.scotton@bham.ac.uk.

Current Research Activities

West Midland Initiative for Neurodegeneration (We-MIND), University of Birmingham

This new initiative, funded by the Mason Legacy Bequest, the NIHR Regional Research Delivery Network, the PSP Association and the MSA Trust. has the following overarching research aims:

(1) Estimate the incidence and prevalence in the West Midlands of the main neurodegenerative diseases including  FTD, FTD-MND and atypical parkinsonian disorders (PSP, CBS, MSA).

(2) Understand the impact of ethnic diversity and socio-economic deprivation on disease phenotype, natural history and disease outcomes

(3) Build a clinical data research platform that will enable rapid access for patients to future disease modifying clinical trials and allow longitudinal research studies with collection of clinical, blood/fluid and imaging data to facilitate biomarker discovery and basic science research.

The Pick's Disease International Consortium

This is a worldwide international collaboration that Dr Scotton started during his PhD to enable clinical characterisation, genetic and imaging studies to better understand the etiology and pathogenesis of this rare, but important, neurodegenerative disease. He is involved not only in running the study (coordinating sample collection, confirmatory immunohistochemistry, DNA extraction and imaging collation) but also in the genome wide association analysis and manuscript preparation for these studies. 

Clinical Trials

PI, RWT - The Early Assessment, Diagnosis and Treatment of Parkinson’s Plus Related Syndromes (ExPRESS)

This is a longitudinal observational study aiming to  improve the early diagnosis of PSP and CBS, the accuracy of both diagnosis and prognosis and to increase the identification of rare Parkinsonian conditions.

Associate PI, QEHB  – Cypress Study

This is a  phase 3 study to assess the efficacy and durability of Ampreloxetine for the Treatment of Symptomatic nOH in Participants with Multiple System Atrophy. Recruitment ongoing. He is involved in recruitment, assessment and monitoring of patients.

Previous Research Activities

Extensive experience in deep clinical phenotyping and management of both movement and cognitive disorders

• 3 years working in the Movement Disorder clinic (under Professor Huw Morris) and the Cognitive clinic (under Professor Jonathan Rohrer) at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, followed by a sabbatical under Professor Kailash Bhatia in Movement Disorders.
• 12 months training under Professor Carl Clarke in his weekly Parkinson’s clinic at City Hospital, as well as under Dr Christopher Kobylecki in his Movement Disorder clinic at Salford General Hospital in Manchester.

Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Fellowship, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology

• “Disease Progression and Genetic Risk Factors in the Primary Tauopathies” – Professor Sir John Hardy
• Using novel machine learning algorithms (event based models and Subtype and Stage Inference) to disentangle phenotypic and temporal heterogeneity in progressive supranuclear palsy and corticobasal syndrome, to allow subtyping and staging of individuals from a single baseline MRI for clinical trial enrichment and disease progression monitoring.
• Building the Pick’s disease international consortium (detailed above) to allow genetic analyses to better understand disease etiology and pathogenesis of this 3-repeat tauopathy. Built experience in immunohistochemistry, large scale genome wide analysis and post-GWAS analyses.
• Clinical research fellow assessing patients recruited to the Genetic Fronto-temporal Dementia (GENFI) trial at the UCL Dementia Research Centre (Professor Jonathan Rohrer)

NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship, Neurology (Birmingham)

• Recruiting and seeing patients as part of the IIH:WT and IIH:DT NIHR RCTs.
• Experienced in following techniques; optical coherence tomography, Humphrey visual fields, retinal photography as well as US guided lumbar punctures
• Molecular cell biological techniques including rt-PCR, western blotting, cell culture with immortalised CPe cell line, and functional assays to assess Na:K ATPase activity in CPe in vitro
• Animal work implanting ICP probes to monitor effects of different compounds on ICP

NIHR Academic Foundation programme, Neurosciences (Cambridge)

• Trained under Professor James Rowe in disorders of movement and cognition: PSP, CBS, MSA, PD and FTD
• Imaging research using advanced MRI (perfusion, DTI, MRS) to look at the invasive margin of glioblastomas