Christopher Bye

Associate Professor Bye leads the MND Centre for Drug Discovery, a world-leading initiative advancing MND/ALS drug discovery through next-generation drug testing technologies. His research uses patient-derived stem cells to model motor neuron degeneration in sporadic MND/ALS, the most common form of the disease. The centre conducts large-scale drug screening to map drug efficacy across the sporadic MND/ALS population, an approach that maximises clinical translatability and offers renewed hope of identifying clinically effective treatments.

Associate Professor Bye holds appointments at Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI), South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health (University of Melbourne).

In 2017, he established and led the FightMND Drug Screening & Precision Medicine Program in collaboration with Bradley Turner, creating a fully-phenotyped MND/ALS stem cell library (>140 donors) and a breakthrough sporadic disease model recapitulating hallmark motor neuron degeneration.

In 2023, Associate Professor Bye's team completed the first large-scale drug screen measuring drug efficacy of clinical drug candidates across the sporadic MND/ALS population. This research, recently published as Bye et al., Nature Neuroscience (2025), replicated the outcomes of prior clinical trials in MND/ALS, and identified a novel drug combination 6.5 times more effective than the current standard of care treatment.

In 2024, Associate Professor Bye secured funding for a 5-year MND/ALS drug discovery program using large-scale drug screening.  Commencing with treatments that can be rapidly delivered to clinical trial, this program aims to find more effective treatments and deliver a new generation of drugs for people with MND/ALS.