Ottavio Arancio, MD, PhD, Columbia University

Dr. Ottavio Arancio received his Ph.D and M.D. from the University of Pisa (Italy).   From 1981 to 1986 he took residency training in Neurology at the University of Verona (Italy).  Dr. Arancio has held Faculty appointments at Columbia University, NYU School of Medicine and at SUNY HSCB.  In 2004 he became Faculty member of the Dept of Pathology and Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University.  His honors include the “G. Moruzzi Fellowship” (Georgetown University), the “Anna Villa Rusconi Foundation Prize” (Italy), and the “INSERM Poste vert Fellowship” (France), Fidia Fellowship, Italy; Speaker’s Fund for Biomedical Research Award; Investigator Initiated Research Award from the Alzheimer Association; AHAF centennial Award, Zenith Award, and Margaret Cahn Research Award (2008).

Dr Arancio is a cellular neurobiologist who has contributed to the characterization of the mechanisms of learning in both normal conditions and during neurodegenerative diseases.   During the last ten years he has pioneered the field of mechanisms of synaptic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease.  Dr. Arancio’s laboratory has focused primarily on events triggered by amyloid protein.  These studies, which have suggested new links between synaptic dysfunction and amyloid protein, are of a general relevance to the field of Alzheimer’s disease both for understanding the etiopathogenesis of the disease and for developing therapies aiming to improve the cognitive symptoms. 

top  

Ben Bahr, PhD, University of Connecticut

Upon receiving his Ph.D. at University of California-Santa Barbara, Ben Bahr joined the large research team at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at University of California-Irvine. He then moved on as Research Scientist and patent advisor for Cortex Pharmaceuticals working on memory enhancing drugs before joining the faculty at the University of Connecticut in 1997. Dr. Bahr has appointments in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Department of Physiology and Neurobiology, and he is an active member of the Neurosciences Program as well as Northeastern University’s Center for Drug Discovery. His laboratory combines molecular, cellular, and behavioral experiments to understand pathogenic cascades that cause synaptic and cognitive dysfunction, and studies new protection strategies in models of Alzheimer’s disease and excitotoxicity. He has over 100 publications and is the primary founder of Synaptic Dynamics, Inc. that is developing first-in-class drugs for Alzheimer’s and other diseases.

top

Randall Bateman, MD, Washington University School of Medicine

Dr. Bateman attended Washington University where he received a B.S. degree in Biology (1995) and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering (1995). He attended Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine where he received his M.D. (2000) with special emphasis on the neurosciences. He completed a medical internship (2001) at Barnes-Jewish Hospital followed by Neurology residency (2004) at Washington University in St. Louis. He then completed post-doctoral research training with David M. Holtzman, M.D. as mentor and clinical research fellowship training at the Washington University ADRC with John Morris, M.D. as mentor. Dr. Bateman treats patients with dementia at the Memory Diagnostic Center of Washington University. He is the recipient of multiple grants and awards from the NIH and outside agencies. He has received awards for his research including the AAN Foundation Corporate Roundtable Clinical Research Fellowship (2004), an American Neurological Association Plenary Session Speaker (2005), a World Technology Award Nominee for Health and Medicine Associate (2006), Scientific American 50, award for outstanding technological leadership, chosen as one of the top 50 scientific advancements of 2006, and the Kopolow Award (2007).

top

Michelle Block, PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University

Dr. Block graduated from Iowa State University in 1994 and received her Ph.D. in Genetics from Penn State University in 2002.  She then worked as a post doc in the laboratory of Dr. Jau-Shyong Hong at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute of Health for 5 years.  At present, Dr. Block is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Dr. Block’s work centers on the role of microglia, the resident innate immune cell in the brain, in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Her research demonstrates that reactive oxygen species (ROS) are critical tools orchestrating microglia-mediated neuron damage. She is currently focusing on identifying the triggers initiating deleterious microglial activation (environmental and endogenous), revealing the mechanisms through which microglial ROS induce neurotoxicity, and applying these findings towards the development of novel therapeutic compounds capable of halting the progression of neurodegenerative disease.  Among other awards, Dr. Block is the recipient of the NIH Pathway to Independence Award.

top

Roberta Brinton, PhD, University of Southern California

Dr. Roberta Diaz Brinton is Professor of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Professor Brinton leads a successful scientific research program to discover neural mechanisms of memory and neuron survival (pharmweb.usc.edu/brinton-lab/). Importantly, her research team is translating their discoveries into therapeutics for prevention of and recovery from neurodegenerative diseases especially Alzheimer’s. Her research has focused on developing optimal safe hormone therapies for prevention of Alzheimer’s disease in postmenopausal women who are the major victims of the disease. Dr. Brinton’s research is also investigating neural mechanisms of learning and developing therapeutics to treat learning disabilities and autism.

Professor Brinton has published over 100 scientific reports and serves on scientific review boards for the National Institutes of Health and the Institute for the Study of Aging. She serves on the scientific advisory board of the Alzheimer’s Drug Development Foundation of the Institute for the Study of Aging and the Diabetes Insipidus Foundation.  Brinton is also the co-founder of a biotechnology company and holds several patents for therapeutics. Professor Brinton has served for 16 years as Director of the USC Science, Technology and Research Program (pharmweb.usc.edu/USCSTAR/). Professor Brinton was recently named by U S News & World Report as a “Best Mind” and was awarded Outstanding Woman of the 24^th California State Senatorial District.  Professor Brinton earned her Ph.D. in Psychobiology and Neuropharmacology from the University of Arizona as a National Institutes of Health Predoctoral fellow. She continued her postdoctoral research in Neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow and joined the USC faculty in 1988.

top

John Cashman, PhD, Human Biomolecular Research Institute

John R. Cashman, Ph.D., Director and Founder, has more than 23 years experience in biomedical research as a researcher, consultant, entrepreneur or administrator. In 1997, he founded the Human BioMolecular Research Institute, a non-profit research institute dedicated to performing fundamental and applied research to address important human diseases of the central nervous system. Previously, he was Senior Scientist at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute and prior to that, he was Associate Director for the IGEN Research Institute in Seattle, Washington. In 1984, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts with Professor E.J. Corey (1982-1984). In 1990, Professor Corey received the Nobel Prize. Dr. Cashman received his Masters and doctorate degrees in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas (1982). Prior to graduate school, he obtained bachelor degrees in chemistry and biology at the College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara (1977). Dr. Cashman was a University of California Presidents Undergraduate Researcher (1974-1976), received a Sigma Xi Undergraduate Research fellowship (1975), was a PEW Scholar Nominee at the University of California, San Francisco (1986), received a March of Dimes Basil O’Connor Research Award (1986), was appointed Technical Advisor, San Francisco Estuary Project (1990) and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1996. In 1991, Dr. Cashman was appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board, Chemical Research in Toxicology and in 1999 he was appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of Current Drug Metabolism. Dr. Cashman is the author of over 155 research articles or book chapters and 6 patents in the area of drug discovery and evaluation. He is extensively consulted by biotechnology, pharmaceutical industry and government in various areas of human drug development, drug safety evaluation, medicinal chemistry, pharmacogenetics and biochemical toxicology. Dr. Cashman is on the Board of Directors of three biotechnology companies.

top

Gabriela Chiosis, PhD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Dr. Gabriela Chiosis is a Principal Investigator in the Program in Molecular Pharmacology and Chemistry at Sloan-Kettering Institute, and an Assistant Attending in the Department of Medicine of Memorial Hospital for Cancer & Allied Diseases, New York. She is also a faculty in several biomedical graduate programs such as the Program in Pharmacology, Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Cornell University, the Tri-Institutional Training Program in Chemical Biology, Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Center, Cornell University and The Rockefeller University and the Cancer Biology Program of the Gerstner Sloan-Kettering Graduate School. She received her graduate training at Columbia University in New York and has joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 1998. The Chiosis Laboratory investigates the significance of modulating molecular chaperones in disease treatment. In this respect, it has developed pharmacological tools instrumental in defining the roles of Hsp90 in regulating the stability and function of aberrant protein driving the neurodegenerative phenotype in tauopathies. Hsp90 inhibitors discovered by the lab are the platform for the development of purine-scaffold Hsp90 inhibitor currently in Phase I evaluation in patients with advanced cancers.

top

A. Claudio Cuello, MD, Dsc, FRSC, McGill University

Dr. A. Claudio Cuello is currently the McGill Charles E. Frosst/Merck Chair in Pharmacology, a Visiting Professor at Oxford University and Adjunct Professor of Neuropharmacology at the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, Ca). He is a past Staff Scientist for the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, U.K. (1975-1978), Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Neuropharmacology and Neuroanatomy at Oxford University and Fellow and Medical Tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford (1978-1985). Dr. Cuello leads a research team working on multidisciplinary aspects of aging and cellular animal models of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology. He has made pioneering publications on denditric release of neurotransmitters, the localization and role of central and peripheral neuropeptides, trophic factor-induced repair and synaptogenesis and novel applications of monoclonal antibodies in the neurosciences. His research activities have been conducted at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, the University of California in San Francisco (USA), the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford (England), and McGill University in Canada. He has received numerous recognitions in Canada, such as the Heinz Lehman Award, the Novartis Award and has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.  He is an Honorary Professor at the Norman Bethume University (China) and at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), as well as Doctor Honoris Causa at the Federal University of Ceara (Brazil) and Honorary Doctor in Medicine at Kuopio University (Finland).  Recently, he was named Highly Cited Neuroscientist by the ISI (Institute of Scientific Information, USA).  His scientific accomplishments until 2001 have been summarized in “The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography” (Sponsored by the Society for Neuroscience, USA), ed. Larry R. Squire, Academic Press, NY, 2001.

top

Douglas Feinstein, PhD, University of Illinois

Dr Doug Feinstein obtained his PhD in cell biology from Johns Hopkins University, acquired post-doctoral training in the Dept of Neuropharmacology at the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic, and took his first faculty position in the Dept of Neurology at the Cornell University Medical College. He is currently Research Professor in the Dept of Anesthesiology at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

His major research focus is to understand and regulate inflammatory responses in neurodegenerative diseases including AD and MS. He is an active member of the American Society for Neurochemistry, and is currently president-elect.

top

Howard Fillit, MD, Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation

Howard Fillit, MD, a geriatrician and neuroscientist, is the founding Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Aging, Inc. as well as its affiliated public charity the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, both of which are dedicated to funding drug discovery for Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Fillit was formally the Corporate Medical Director for Medicare at NYLCare Health Plans (now a division of Aetna, Inc.), where he was responsible for over 125,000 Medicare members in 8 regional markets. He has also had a distinguished academic career at The Rockefeller University and The Mount Sinai Medical Center (NY), where he is currently a clinical professor of geriatrics and medicine and a professor of neurobiology. Dr. Fillit has received many awards and honors, including the Rita Hayworth Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Alzheimer's Association. He is a fellow of the American Geriatrics Society, the American College of Physicians, the Gerontological Society of America, and the New York Academy of Medicine. Dr. Fillit is the author or co-author of more than 250 publications, including the leading international Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology. He served as a consultant to a variety of individuals, managed care organizations, health care systems, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

top

S. Prasad Gabbita, PhD, P2D Biosciences

Dr. Gabbita received his Ph,D. in Toxicology from the University of Kentucky, Lexington in 1996. For his Ph.D. thesis, Dr. Gabbita examined the role of mitochondrial respiration in lipid and protein oxidation. Dr. Gabbita pursued postdoctoral studies at the Sanders Brown Center on Aging, Lexington where he evaluated the extent of free-radical mediated nuclear and mitochondrial DNA and protein oxidation levels in AD. Dr. Gabbita continued his post-doctoral training at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation where he examined novel antioxidants and anti-neuroinflammatory compounds as potential CNS therapeutics. Dr. Gabbita joined P2D in 2000 and now heads its Research and Development activities. Dr. Gabbita’s research is focused on developing novel therapeutic agents to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as AD, PD and ALS. Dr. Gabbita is also developing point-of-care, protein biomarker-based diagnostics for rapidly detecting traumatic brain injury in a neuroemergency setting.  

top

Illana Gozes, PhD, Tel Aviv University and Allon Therapeutics, Inc. 

Dr. Gozes is a founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Allon Therapeutics Inc (Vancouver, Canada) and Professor of Clinical Biochemistry, the Lily and Avraham Gildor Chair for the Investigation of Growth factors at Tel Aviv University (TAU), where she directs the Adams Super Center for Brain Studies, the Edersheim Levie-Gitter Institute for Functional Brain Imaging. At the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Professor Gozes heads the Dr. Diana and Zelman Elton (Elbaum) Laboratory for Molecular Neuroendocrinology. Professor Gozes serves or has served as a member (or chair) of several faculty/university/national and international committees and is currently the Editor-in Chief of the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience.  Professor Gozes was recently elected as President elect of the Israel Society for Neuroscience.  Professor Gozes has received a number of scientific awards and prizes for her work, including the Landau Prize for excellent PhD dissertation, the Juludan Prize and later the Teva Prize for opening new horizons in medical research in Israel, the Bergmann prize and later the Neufeld award for leading grant proposals from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation.  Prof. Gozes was recently selected as the 2007 recipient of the Tel Aviv University Applied Research Award. The award is given to one faculty member annually for outstanding achievements in applied research exemplified by numerous versatile inventions and patents Prof. Gozes educated more than 50 students for the M.Sc. or Ph.D. degrees and has published extensively in the fields of molecular neuroscience, neuropeptides and neuroprotection (>210 publications and a book). She is co-inventor of more than 25 patents and patent applications, including the composition of matter patent on AL-108, Allon's lead compound formulation.  Professor Gozes received a Ph.D. from The Weizmann Institute of Science, and a postdoctoral fellow from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a research associate and visiting scientist at the Salk Institute and the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation and a Fogarty-Scholar-in-Residence at the National Institutes of Health (USA).

top

Varghese John, PhD, Buck Institute

Varghese John is currently Director of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Network at the Buck Institute for Age Research.  The Drug Discovery Network is developing novel therapeutic approaches to Alzheimer’s disease in collaboration with Dr. Dale Bredesen, Professor and CEO of the Buck Institute.  Previously, Varghese was at Elan Pharmaceuticals for 18 years and led a team of medicinal chemists developing drugs for CNS diseases with a focus on AD.  His work at Elan included development of potent inhibitors for BACE and g-secretase, key enzymes in formation Abeta and amyloid plaques.  He has several scientific publications and patents in his field.  He is also acting as CEO of a startup company E-SOC, Inc. focused on Parkinson’s disease. 

top

Anthony Koleske, PhD, Yale University

Dr. Anthony J. Koleske is an expert in understanding the biochemical mechanisms that control changes in cell shape and movement.  After receiving a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Koleske performed his Ph.D. studies with Dr. Richard Young at the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  For his Ph.D. thesis, Dr. Koleske discovered the RNA polymerase II holoenzyme, an important advancement in understanding how gene transcription is turned on.  Dr. Koleske went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship with Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baltimore at the Rockefeller University and later at M.I.T., where he began his work studying cellular functions of Abl family kinases, essential regulators of the cytoskeleton.  Dr. Koleske joined the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University in 1998, where he is currently a tenured Associate Professor and has a joint appointment in the Department of Neurobiology.  Dr. Koleske is the recipient of numerous awards including a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Special Fellowship from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, a NARSAD Young Investigator Award, and an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association.  He has served on several N.I.H. Study Sections and is currently co-Chair of the Basic Science Study Section for the American Heart Association. 

top

Alan Kozikowski, PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago

Dr. Alan P. Kozikowski is a professor of Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Director of International Drug Discovery Institute. He has published more than 400 peer reviewed research papers in a variety of prestigious scientific journals and also has over 100 patents.

Dr. Kozikowski has an Alzheimer’s disease drug in phase II clinical trials, an Akt inhbitor going into Phase 0 trials at the NCI last year, and a prostate cancer imaging agent being taken into the clinic this year at Hopkins.          

top

Jeff Kuret, PhD, Ohio State University

Dr. Kuret is a Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at The Ohio State University.  He completed his B.S. degree in biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, and conducted graduate work with Professor Howard Schulman at Stanford University.  After earning his Ph.D. degree in Pharmacology, he joined the laboratory of Sir Philip Cohen in the Medical Sciences Institute, Dundee, Scotland as a postdoctoral fellow, and served on the faculties of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Northwestern University.  He currently serves on the Synapse Cytoskeleton and Trafficking (SYN) and Drug Discovery (MNPS-C) review panels at the NIH Center for Scientific Review.
 
Dr. Kuret’s laboratory focuses primarily on tau aggregation and neurofibrillary lesion formation in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration.

top

Thomas Lanz, PhD, Pfizer, Inc.

Thomas Lanz is a Senior Scientist in Neurosciences Biology R&D at Pfizer in Groton, CT.  Tom has spent the past seven years trying to understand the biology underlying Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis and disease progression, and has worked on a number of AD targets.  Particular focus has been given to gamma secretase, and he has authored several publications dealing with the pharmacodynamics of gamma secretase inhibitors.    Other notable areas of interest have included AD biomarkers, Abeta passive immunotherapy, and synaptic deficits in AD models.  Prior to his work in Alzheimer’s disease, Tom studied physiology and behavior at the University of CT and Colgate University, and functional neuroanatomy at Vanderbilt University and the National Institute of Mental Health. 

top

Daniel Laskowitz, MD, MHS, Duke University Medical Center

Dr. Laskowitz is a graduate of Duke University School of Medicine (1991) and Brown University (1987), where he majored in Neuroscience. After completing his Neurology Residency at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, he returned to Duke to complete fellowship training in Neurocritical Care and Stroke.  He has remained active in both laboratory-based and clinical research, and completed his Masters of Health Science in Clinical Research in 2003.  He currently serves as the Fellowship Director in Neurocritical Care and Director of the Neurovascular Laboratory.  Dr. Laskowitz attends on the Neurosciences Intensive Care Unit, a multidisciplinary unit in which patients with life-threatening neurological diseases such as stroke, trauma, and intracranial hemorrhage are cared for.  He also heads a laboratory that uses molecular biology, cell culture, and animal modeling techniques to examine the CNS response to acute injury. These results are translated to clinically relevant small animal models with the ultimate goal of exploring new therapeutic interventions in the clinical setting of stroke, intracranial hemorrhage, and closed head injury.  The results of this work have been translated to several pilot clinical studies examining new treatment approaches for patients in the Neurocritical Care Unit, such as the use of statins to improve outcomes after subarachnoid hemorrhage, and the development of a  novel point-of care diagnostic test to rapidly identify and expedite the care of patients with acute stroke.  Dr. Laskowitz’s laboratory has also focused on genetic influences that modify how the brain responds to injury.  In particular, he has focused on the role that variants of the apolipoprotein E play in recovery from different forms of acute brain injury. 

top

Frank Longo, MD, PhD, Stanford University

Dr. Longo received his MD in 1981 and PhD in Neurosciences in 1983 from the University of California, San Diego. Following an internship in medicine at NYU/VA, he trained as a resident in neurology and fellow in neurobiology at University of California, San Francisco. While at UCSF he created the Neurogenetics Clinic which was the first West Coast site in the U.S. to offer DNA testing for families with Huntington’s disease. He also led the creation of a national referral center for deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease and contributed to the development of programs in dementia, epilepsy and other areas. At UCSF he became professor and vice chair of the Department of Neurology and in 2001 he was recruited to become chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. While at UNC, Dr. Longo launched or expanded programs for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, stroke, epilepsy, sleep disorders, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. In January 2006, Dr. Longo became chair of the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford where he is focused on building and expanding multidisciplinary programs in neurology and neuroscience. In 2006 he was named a Stanford Fellow. Dr. Longo’s research team focuses on elucidating novel mechanisms that prevent neural degeneration and promote regeneration. He and his colleagues have pioneered the development of small, drug-like, molecules that target neurotrophin receptors to delay onset of or slow progression of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders.

top

Eva-Maria Mandelkow, MD, PhD, Max Planck Unit for Structural Molecular Biology

Eva-Maria Mandelkow received her MD degree at the University of Hamburg, German, and worked for several years as an intern at university hospitals in Hamburg and Heidelberg. She then switched to basic biomedical research, obtained her PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Brandeis University (USA) and in Heidelberg. Her scientific interests center around the biochemistry, structure and cell biology of the cytoskeleton, notably microtubules, motor proteins, and microtubule-associated proteins. Among these proteins, Tau protein is unique because it forms pathological aggregates in Alzheimer's disease and several other neurodegenerative diseases. The focus of her present research is the elucidation of the physiological and pathological functions of Tau protein in cell and animal models of neurodegeneration, and the identification of targets for intervention. Eva-Maria Mandelkow is currently a principal investigator at the Max-Planck-Unit for Structural Molecular Biology in Hamburg, Germany.

top

Karoly Nikolich, PhD, Stanford University and Amnestix, Inc.

Karoly Nikolich has been CEO of Amnestix, Inc. since its founding in 2007.  He has also served as the US partner and advisor of dievini Hopp investments since 2007, supporting the portfolio companies in strategic activities. He has also been board and SAB member of several biotech companies.  Before joining Amnestix and dievini, he was executive director of the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University. Karoly co-founded several biotech companies, including AGY Therapeutics with Bob Swanson in 1998.  He started his career in the biotech industry as a scientist at Genentech 25 years ago where he initiated and built the company’s first neuroscience research program. Later, he was Vice President of Research at Lynx Therapeutics (acquired by Solexa/Illumina). Karoly is also Consulting Professor at Stanford University Medical School and was formerly Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California. As a scientist he co-authored 125 publications.

Karoly is a graduate of Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary, and conducted postdoctoral studies at Tulane University in New Orleans and at the University of California San Francisco.

top

Juan Sanchez-Ramos, MD, PhD,  University of South Florida

Dr. Juan Sanchez-Ramos, PhD, MD  is Professor of Neurology at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa where he holds the Helen Ellis Endowed Chair for Parkinson’s Disease Research.  He is an Investigator with the NIA-sponsored ADRC at the Johnnie Byrd Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center & Institute.   He is also the Director of the HDSA Center of Excellence at USF, a comprehensive clinic dedicated to patients with Huntington’s Disease. 

In addition to teaching medical students and neurology residents,  he directs a basic research laboratory with active projects in neurodegeneration and adult stem cell biology.

top

Horacio Uri Saragovi, PhD, Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research

Dr. H. Uri Saragovi is a Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology & Therapeutics, and Oncology at McGill University in Montreal.  He has held key positions in a variety of Groups and Institutes including: the McGill Center for Translational Research, the McGill Chemical Biology Program, the Jewish General Hospital-Lady Davis Research Institute, the Bloomfield Center for Neuroscience, the inter-University Group for Research in Medicines (GRUM), and others. Professor Saragovi has authored more than 80 scientific papers in highly respected peer-review journals and has 11 patents for the development of peptidomimetics, rational antibody design, drug-conjugate linkers, and therapeutic targets.  He is a member of editorial review boards of leading scientific journals, and sits or has served on grant review panels at the NIH (USA), the CIHR (Canada) and the NCI (USA and Canada).

top

Hyman Schipper, MD, PhD, FRCPC, McGill University and Osta Biotechnologies Inc.

Dr. Schipper received his M.D. and Ph.D. (Neuroendocrinology) degrees at McGill University in 1982. He completed Internal Medicine Residency at the Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital (McGill; 1982-4), a Residency in Neurology at Columbia University (1984-7) and a Fellowship in Endocrinology at Tufts University (1987-8). Dr. Schipper is currently tenured Professor of Neurology and Medicine (Geriatrics) at McGill University, staff neurologist at the Jewish General Hospital, and consultant at other Montreal institutions.  He is founding director of the Centre for Neurotranslational Research and the Biomedical Redox Laboratory at the Jewish General Hospital. In 2005, he became founding scientist and medical director (neurosciences) of Molecular Biometrics LLC, a company developing metabolomics-based diagnostic technologies in neurodegenerative diseases and assisted reproduction. Dr. Schipper’s long-standing research interests are in the fields of oxidative stress, brain aging and neurodegenerative diseases. Since 1990, his laboratory has garnered extensive evidence implicating heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and iron-containing astroglia in CNS senescence and free radical-related neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Schipper has published over 140 primary and review articles on various aspects of the redox neurosciences and related topics and is an inventor on 11 patents. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Neurochemistry, is an internal examiner for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and is a member of 14 professional societies. At McGill University and the Jewish General Hospital, Dr. Schipper provides basic and clinical teaching in the neurosciences and coordinates an interdisciplinary course on Free Radical Biomedicine in the Faculty of Science.

top

Diana Shineman, PhD, Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation

Diana Shineman, PhD is the Assistant Director for Scientific Affairs at the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, where she is responsible for developing and managing all aspects of the Foundation’s drug discovery research programs. 

Dr. Shineman earned her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).   At Penn’s renowned Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research led by Drs. Virginia Lee and John Trojanowski, she studied signal transduction pathways that alter amyloid generation in Alzheimer’s disease.  Dr. Shineman also worked with the Center’s Drug Discovery Group to perform high-throughput screening using cell-based assays.  In addition to her dissertation research, Dr. Shineman was as an Editorial Intern for the Journal of Clinical Investigation and was an active member of the Penn Biotechnology Group.  Dr. Shineman received a BA in Biology with a Nutrition concentration from Cornell University, where she was named a Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research Scholar.  She is also a member of the Society for Neuroscience and an author on numerous peer-reviewed publications.

top

Einar Sigurdsson, PhD, New York University Medical Center

Einar M. Sigurdsson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience, and Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. A native of Iceland, he received a master’s degree in Pharmacy from the University of Iceland, and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Loyola University Chicago Medical Center. He subsequently obtained postdoctoral training at New York University School of Medicine.  His current research focuses on pathogenesis, therapy and diagnosis for age-related protein conformational disorders, in particular Alzheimer’s and prion diseases, as well as exploratory studies in type-2 diabetes. This endeavor has led to over 50 peer reviewed publications and several patents, issued or pending.

Dr. Sigurdsson and his collaborators pioneered the use of modified Aβ derivatives as potential immunotherapy for Alzheimer’s disease. Furthermore, they showed for the first time that active and passive immunization delayed the onset of prion disease in mice. They have now been able to prevent clinical symptoms in a large number of infected mice with a novel oral immunization approach. In addition, they published the first study showing that chelators are a potential therapy for prion disease. On the diagnostic front, Dr. Sigurdsson and colleagues published the initial report on detection of amyloid plaques in living brains by magnetic resonance imaging. Lately, he has pioneered the approach to harness the immune system to target pathological tau protein, which will be the focus of his presentation. Dr. Sigurdsson is currently supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and the Alzheimer’s Association (Zenith Fellow), and he is a recipient of the Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award.

top

David Vocadlo, PhD, Simon Fraser University

David Vocadlo completed his Ph.D. in the laboratory of Prof. S.G. Withers at UBC in 2002 and his interest in fusing chemistry and biology drew him to the laboratory of Prof. C.R Bertozzi at the University of California at Berkeley where he was a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2004 Dr. Vocadlo was appointed as an assistant professor to the Department of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University and Canada Research Chair in Chemical Glycobiology.  He is a Scholar of the Michel Smith Health Research Foundation and an affiliate of the Brain Research Centre at UBC.

top

D. Martin Watterson, PhD, Northwestern University

Dr. Watterson is Co-Director of the University Center for Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology and holds the John G. Searle Endowed Chair in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Northwestern University.  He also is a Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry in the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Dr. Watterson has published articles in peer-reviewed journals in the areas of drug discovery, signal transduction, structural biology, pharmacology and medicinal chemistry. His Ph.D. training was in the areas of Biophysical Chemistry and Biochemical Pharmacology at Emory University, followed by postdoctoral training at Duke University Medical Center supported by a National Research Service Award in Neurosciences from the National Institutes of Health 1975 to 1977.  Dr. Watterson held the positions of Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at The Rockefeller University from 1978-1982 where he was an Andrew Mellon Fellow.  He later was a Howard Hughes Investigator and Professor of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt Medical Center before moving to Northwestern University in 1994.  In his role as Co-Director of the Center for Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology, Dr. Watterson has facilitated the development of novel compounds emanating from Center investigators and their movement towards the clinic. Center investigators experiences span the range of the entire drug discovery and development spectrum, including novel compound discovery, candidate compound optimization, preclinical IND-enabling studies, clinical trials, and FDA approval.

top

Karl H. Weisgraber, PhD, Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease

Dr. Weisgraber received a B.A. degree in Zoology and a Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Connecticut.  He has served on several Editorial Boards and NIH Study Sections and is a member of numerous professional societies.  In 1994, he was awarded the Metropolitan Life Foundation Award for Medical Research. He has over 250 published articles.  His long-standing research interests focus on the structure and function of apolipoprotein E (apoE). Initially, this interest centered on the role of apoE in cardiovascular disease, but has expanded in recent years to include the role of apoE, in particular the apoE4 isoform, in Alzheimer’s disease.  The experimental approach involves the use of x-ray crystallography, site-directed mutagenesis, and other methods of biophysical characterization to define differences among the apoE isoforms that are responsible for the differential effects that the isoforms exert in various disease settings.

top

Moussa B.H. Youdim, PhD, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Prof. Moussa Youdim was chairman of Pharmacology from its inception from 1977 to 1994. He is now the Finkelstein Professor of Life Sciences and Professor of Pharmacology   at the Technion-Rappaport Family Faculty of Medicine and the Director of the Eve Topf  and National Parkinson Foundation (USA) Centers of Excellence for Neurodegenerative Diseases Research and Teaching at Technion.

He is internationally renowned for his research in depressive illness , Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease and drug development for these disorders and for establishing the importance of  monoamine oxidase and brain iron metabolism for brain function that can lead to cognitive impairments in ADHD and neurodegenerative diseases.. His  research at Oxford University led to the discovery of  the monoamine  oxidase B inhibitor, l-deprenyl (selegiline) as an anti Parkinson drug in 1975  which was responsible for changing the prospects of treating Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders with drugs that would possess possible disease modifying (neuroprotective) activity. His research at    the Technion has led to the development of the second generation  of monoamine oxidase inhibitor anti-Parkinson drug, Rasagiline (Azilect), with Prof. John Finberg in collaboration with Teva Pharmaceutical Co. and  the multifunctional  neuroprotective anti-Alzheimer drug currently designated Ladostigil (TV 3326)  now in Phase IIa, with Prof. Marta Weinstock of Hebrew University. For the past ten  years he has been advocating development of multimodal neuroprotective- neurorestorative drugs  with various neuron targets as treatment for neurodegenerative disordrers., one of whicjh is ladostigil. More  recently  he has developed with Prof. Mati Fridkin of Weizmann Institute novel multifunctional  iron chelators with monoamine oxidsase and cholinesterase inhibitory activity such as  HLA-20, M30, M30C and D for treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes.  These drugs account  for more than 90 of Prof. Youdim's considerable number of international patents in the field of neuropsychiatric drug development and cardiovascular drugs. Rasagiline has  received approval from Israel Ministry of Health, European Commission on Drugs and  from FDA and now it is  marketed in 24 countries. Prof. Youdim serves as a consultant for several major international pharmaceutical companies. He serves on many National and International scientific and grant  giving committees.  He has published more than 800 scientific articles and edited 45 books and  has been on the Editorial Board of 43 International scientific journals.  He  has received  numerous major awards and honours from Israel, U.S., England, Germany, Iran, Denmark,  Holland and Switzerland, including two Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy, Honoris Causa, from universities of  Semmelweis University (Hungary)  and Pisa (Italy).  From 1991 through 1999, he was a Fogarty International Scholar-in-Residence at the Fogarty International Center for Advanced Study in the Human Health Sciences program of the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, USA. The Only Technion Academic to receive this honor.