Emeritus Professor Warren Tate

FRSNZ, CNZM

Emeritus Professor Warren Tate FRSNZ CNZM

Professor Warren Tate has been an academic and researcher at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand spanning 55 years. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and internationally, a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany, and was an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of the United States.

Professor Tate’s research currently has a strong interest in unexplained human diseases.

He works on mammalian memory and Alzheimer’s disease and the development of a potential therapeutic agent based on a natural neuroprotective brain protein, secreted amyloid precursor protein alpha. His most recent research programme initiated in 2012 has been on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis /Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) focussing on preclinical studies with New Zealand patients to understand its biological basis. Professor Tate approaches research on ME/CFS through the dual lens of an affected family of 30 years and a biomedical researcher. He has found molecular signatures for the illness supporting its biological basis and has now shown the post-Covid fatigue syndrome cohort of Long COVID sufferers who have ongoing illness from SARS-CoV-2 infection have closely overlapping molecular signatures as found in ME/CFS. Most recently he has become involved in advocating for many ME/CFS patients in NZ who have had ongoing serious adverse reactions from the COVID vaccination campaign.