Michelle Block, PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University (confirmed)

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.

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Roberta Brinton, PhD, University of Southern California (confirmed)

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.

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Luc Buee, PhD, French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (confirmed)

Luc Buée is a French scientist (CNRS Research Director). Head of the Inserm laboratory « Neurodegenerative disorders & Neuronal Death » at the Jean-Pierre Aubert Research Centre, University of Lille (Law and Health), he has worked on Alzheimer disease and related disorders for almost twenty years. He started his work on the role of proteoglycans in Alzheimer disease with a PhD training at Mount Sinai Medical Center, NYC (Prof. Howard Fillit). He was then involved in the initial characterization of tau aggregates among neurodegenerative disorders with A. Delacourte. He has then developed experimental models to better understand the role of phosphorylation in tau aggregation. His group is currently working on the pathophysiological consequences of neurofibrillary degeneration and their links to the amyloid pathology in Alzheimer disease. He has also some interest in cell cycle markers and Pin1 isomerase. His group is also involved in different European consortia.

Luc Buée is also involved in different scientific advisory boards including France Alzheimer Association, Fédération pour la Recherche sur le Cerveau (FRC – Brain Research Federation) and the Institute for the Study Of Aging (ISOA, NY, USA).

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John Cashman, PhD, Human Biomolecular Research Institute (confirmed)

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.

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Siew Yeen Chai, PhD, Howard Florey Institute (confirmed)

Siew Yeen Chai majored in pharmacology and biochemistry for her undergraduate degree and obtained her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 1989.  She then went on to the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm for her postdoctoral training before returning to the University of Melbourne in 1992.  She is currently a senior research fellow and the head of a small research unit, the molecular neurochemistry group, at the Howard Florey Institute.  Her research group, which comprises of 4 postdoctoral fellows, 2 research assistants and 2 students, utilizes a multidisciplinary approach, from molecular and cell based techniques to whole animal physiology, to investigate the roles of metallopeptidases in the brain. 

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Gabriela Chiosis, PhD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (confirmed)

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.

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Lauren C. Costantini, PhD, Accera, Inc. (confirmed)

Luciano D'Adamio, MD, PhD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine (confirmed)

Howard Fillit, MD, Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (confirmed)

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.

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Paul Gard, PhD, University of Brighton (confirmed)

Dr. Goloubinoff graduated from University of Lausanne in 1981 and received his PhD from the Weizmann Institute in 1987. He was a postdoc with George Lorimer at Dupont experimental station DE 1990 and later, a postdoc at UC Berkeley with the late Alan Wilson (1991).  He served as a lecturer, senior lecturer and then associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since 2001, Dr Goloubinoff is an associate professor at University of Lausanne, teaching protein biochemistry and stress biology. His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of disaggregating molecular chaperones and on heat-shock sensing and signaling in plants and animals. Both approaches feed a program of drug research to boost the natural molecular mechanisms by which cells prevent the formation of, and even cure, toxic protein aggregates as in Alzheimer's disease.

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Since March 2004, Dr. Goure has been Vice-President for Business Development for Acumen Pharmaceuticals.  Dr. Goure has over 20 years of domestic and international experience in the discovery, development, registration, commercial development, and commercialization of chemical and biotechnology products.  

Prior to joining Acumen, Dr. Goure was Vice-President for Commercial Development for Mendel Biotechnology, a bay area company dedicated to creating value through the discovery, development and commercialization of knowledge about plant gene expression.  At Mendel, Dr. Goure negotiated numerous technology collaboration and partnership agreements that generated over $29 million dollars of near term revenues.  Prior to joining Mendel, Dr. Goure worked for Monsanto Company for 17 years where he developed and commercialized Roundup Ready® soybeans, canola, and cotton.  Dr. Goure was a member of the team that established Monsanto’s quality traits program that led to the Renessen joint (partnership) with Cargill, and was responsible for establishing commercial launch teams in Eastern Europe, South Africa, and Southern Latin America. 

Dr. Goure has a B.S. degree in Chemistry from Fort Lewis College, Durango Colorado, and a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from Iowa State University.

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Antony Horton, PhD, Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (confirmed)

Dr. Horton gained his Doctoral degree at St. Andrews University in Scotland U.K., where he was trained in the areas of developmental neurobiology and neuronal cell survival.  Following this, he conducted 4 years of post-doctoral research into neurodegenerative diseases at the Rockefeller University in New York. Dr. Horton has published on aspects of neurodegeneration and neuronal cell survival in a number of research papers and journal articles.  Prior to joining ADDF, Dr. Horton had 5 years experience working in a non-profit setting, where as Program Director at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, he led a small team that helped set the research agenda for Diabetes Complications.  Working with Dr. Fillit and the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Horton will be responsible for current and new research programs at the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and its affiliate, the Institute for the Study of Aging.

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Varghese John, PhD, Buck Institute (confirmed)

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. 

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Jari Koistinaho, MD, University of Kuopio (confirmed)

Dr. Koistinaho received his MD in 1985 and PhD in neurobiology in 1988 from the University of Tampere. He trained as a visiting fellow with Stanley I. Rapoport at NIA, NIH, and a postdoc with Steven Sagar and Frank Sharp at UCSF. In 1995 he joined the A.I. Virtanen Institute at the University of Kuopio as research director and in 1999 he became professor of Molecular Brain Research and in 2004 dean of the same Institute. He served also as director of A.I. Virtanen Graduate School and is currently Director of Biocenter Kuopio and a member of the Biocenter Finland. He has been a visiting research professor with Pak Chan in Stanford in 1998-1999 and with Martin Farlow at the Indiana Medical School 2002-2003. He has been a founding member of two biotech start-up companies and a scientific adviser of some SMEs in Finland. Dr. Koistinaho has studied stroke and neurodegenerative diseases since 1991 and his research group is a member in Nordic Center of Excellence in Neurodegeneration. Dr. Koistinaho has authored more than 150 research papers and three patents. His group was the first to report the neuroprotective effects of minocycline, a tetracycline antibiotic which is currently in several clinical trials for neurodegenerative diseases.

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Peter T. Lansbury, Jr., PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (confirmed)

Peter Lansbury received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Princeton University in 1980 and his doctorate in organic chemistry with Nobel laureate E. J. Corey from Harvard University in 1985.  After a postdoctoral fellowship with the late Tom Kaiser at the Rockefeller University, he joined the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1988.  He moved to his present position in 1996.  Among his other honors, he received the Zeneca Pharmaceuticals Excellence in Chemistry Award in 1995, the Abbott Distinguished Investigator Award in 1993, a Zenith Fellows award from the Alzheimer’s Association (1999), and was a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator from 1990 to 1995.    Dr. Lansbury is director of the Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence at Brigham and Women's Hospital.  He is on the Scientific Advisory boards of the Institute for the Study of Aging, the Parkinson's Action Network, and the Boston Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis.   He serves on the editorial boards of Accounts of Chemical Research and Journal of Molecular Biology.  

The Lansbury research group has made important contributions towards the understanding of the underlying etiology of neurodegenerative diseases; including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and mad cow disease.   They have focussed on elucidation of the process of abnormal protein aggregation, a shared feature of all of these diseases.  Their experimental findings have laid the groundwork for the design of a novel class of therapeutics that seek to inhibit this process.   The group is currently focussed on translating their basic discoveries into lead compounds that will spur the development of new drugs to slow neurodegeneration. 

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Frank Longo, MD, PhD, Stanford University (confirmed)

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.

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Eva-Maria Mandelkow, PhD, Max Planck Unit for Structural Biology (confirmed)

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Philippe Marambaud, PhD, North Shore Long Island Jewish Research Institute (confirmed)

Dr. Marambaud’s research focuses on the molecular basis of neuronal degeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD). His laboratory studies the early biochemical changes leading to the formation of two classic lesions of the AD brain, the senile plaques and the neurofibrillary tangles. The laboratory has developed genetic, molecular, and cell biology methods for the purification and analysis of the core components of these lesions, the amyloid-b (Ab) peptide and the hyperphosphorylated tau. The central role of presenilin and presenilin-interacting proteins in APP and cadherin processing and signaling and the mechanisms by which AD-linked presenilin mutations interfere with these pathways are also under study. Biochemical and cell biology studies of human brain tissues are complemented by cell culture systems and protein analysis. The research also includes a drug discovery program that involves APP-transfected cell culture systems and analysis of transgenic mouse models of amyloid accumulation. Another related line of investigation is directed towards identifying novel candidate genes involved in late-onset AD. Dr. Marambaud is principal investigator of grants from the Alzheimer’s Association, the Institute for the Study of Aging, and the KeySpan Corporation.

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Jeffrey S. Nye, MD, PhD, Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical R&D, LLC

Dr. Nye is the head of the early clinical development group for the East Coast of J&J Pharma.  Prior to his current position at J&J, Jeff was the compound development team leader for Topiramate (Topamax), a blockbuster anticonvulsant and anti-migraine drug, and Razadyne (galantamine), a medication for Alzheimer’s disease.  At Pharmacia/Pfizer, he was a director of the CNS Genomics group and led the Pharmacia/Exelixis collaboration that discovered components of the Gamma Secretase.

Jeff joined industry after a successful academic career where he was a tenured associate professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry and of Pediatrics (neurology) at Northwestern University.  His lab studied the mechanism of signal transduction and role in brain development of the Notch family of proteins.  Clinically, Jeff was the director of Spina Bifida Genetic Research at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago.  He was the recipient of numerous federal and private grant awards.

Jeff is a native of Chicago and received his bachelor’s in biochemistry and master’s in pharmacology degrees from Harvard.  He received his MD and PhD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and where he studied cannabinoid receptors with Dr. Solomon Snyder.  Jeff did his pediatrics residency and additional neurology training while on the Neurology faculty at Columbia University.   He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Richard Axel at Columbia.

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Leonard Petrucelli, PhD, Mayo Clinic (confirmed)

Dr. Petrucelli next pursued his research interests at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, where he worked in the laboratories of John Hardy Ph.D. and Mike Hutton Ph.D.  At the Mayo Clinic he focused on a) identifying the ubiquitin ligase for tau and b) understanding the molecular mechanism responsible for selective dopaminerigic cell death. He and his colleagues identified and characterized tau as a CHIP substrate. He also demonstrated that parkin protects against the toxicity associated with overexpression of mutant alpha-synuclein and that the overexpression of this protein selectively affects dopaminergic neurons and impairs net proteasome activity.  

More recently, he has shown that inhibitors of the chaperone heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) can selectively enhance the degradation of abnormal phosphorylated tau protein in animal models of neurodegenerative disease.   

Dr. Petrucelli is presently an assistant professor and Senior Associate Consultant at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville.

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Igor Roninson, PhD, Senex Biotechnology, Inc. (confirmed)

Dr. Igor Roninson is the founder and President of Senex Biotechnology, Inc. and the Director of Cancer Center at Ordway Research Institute in Albany, New York. Until 2003, Dr. Roninson was Distinguished University Professor of Molecular Genetics and Head of the Division of Molecular Oncology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is an inventor of 37 issued US patents, author of 145 articles and chapters, and the editor of two books in the area of molecular oncology. Dr. Roninson is a member of the editorial boards of Cancer Research, Cell Cycle, Cancer Letters and Drug Resistance Updates.  

Dr. Roninson’s works include the development of the in-gel DNA renaturation technique for detecting and cloning amplified genes; cloning and characterization of the MDR1 (ABCB1) multidrug resistance gene; development of the Genetic Suppressor Elements (GSE) methodology for function-based gene identification and the use of this approach to identify genes involved in tumor cell growth and drug response; elucidation of tumor cell senescence as a general antiproliferative effect of cancer therapeutics; and the discovery of the effect of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor proteins on the expression of genes implicated in cancer and age-related diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. Among his awards are Rhoads Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, MERIT Award from the National Cancer Institute and Life Extension Prize from Regenerative Medicine Secretariat.

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Juan Sanchez-Ramos, MD, PhD,  University of South Florida (confirmed)

Dr. Juan Sanchez-Ramos is a Venezuelan-born Neurologist educated in the United States.  He received a B.S. Degree in Biology from the University of Chicago in 1967.  After 3 years experience as a freelance artist in France, Spain and Denmark, he returned to the scholar’s life, earning a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Physiology from the University of Chicago in 1976 and a medical degree (M.D.) from the University of Illinois in 1981.   He trained in Neurology at the University of Chicago and as a Fellow in Movement Disorders at the University of Miami.  Currently, he 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 also the Director of the HDSA Center of Excellence at USF,  a comprehensive clinic dedicated to patients with Huntington’s Disease.  He is an Investigator in the NIH Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Bryd AD Institute at USF.  In addition to teaching and attending patients with Movement Disorders, he directs a basic research laboratory with active projects in neurodegeneration, neurotoxicology and adult stem cell biology.

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John Trojanowski, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania (confirmed)

Dr. John Trojanowski, (MD/PhD, Tufts University,1976) began training in pathology/neuropathology, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School; completed training, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (1980); joined Penn faculty (1981). Professor, Department Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Director, Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center; Co-Director, Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research; Director, Institute on Aging; Co-Director, Marian S. Ware Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Program.

Research on Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, motor neuron disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, frontotemporal dementia and related disorders.

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D. Martin Watterson, PhD, Northwestern University (confirmed)

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.

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Nicholas Webster, PhD, Veterans Medical Research Foundation (confirmed)

Dr. Nicholas Webster obtained his B.A and M.A. in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, followed by a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University.   He obtained post-doctoral training through a European Exchange Fellowship from the Royal Society under Professor Pierre Chambon at the L.G.M.E. du C.N.R.S. in Strasbourg, France.   Dr. Webster then joined the faculty in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, where he is currently Professor of Medicine.  Dr. Webster also has appointments at the Moore's UCSD Cancer Center, the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System and the Veterans Medical Research Foundation.  Dr. Webster's research interests  focus on understanding the cellular mechanisms of signal transduction.  His goal is to understand how cells respond to hormones.   Ongoing projects in his lab include studies on how pituitary cells respond to neural peptides,  studies on the regulation of alternative RNA splicing, and the development of small molecule activators of tyrosine kinase receptors using combinatorial chemistry.

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Thomas Wisniewski, MD, New York University (confirmed)

Dr. Wisniewski is a Professor of Neurology, Pathology and Psychiatry at NYU. He serves as the Director of the Conformational Disorders Laboratory, as well as being Director of the Memory and Dementia Disorders Center at NYU Medical Center. In addition, he is the Director of the Neuropathology Core of the NIH-funded NYU Alzheimer's Disease (AD) clinical center.

Dr. Wisniewski's laboratory focuses on gaining a better understanding of conformational disorders such as AD and prion related disease. This work has led to over 160 peer-reviewed publications. Key contributions have included discovering the role of apolipoprotein E in driving amyloid β accumulation in late-onset AD. Dr. Wisniewski's laboratory coined the term “pathological chaperone” to denote the role of apoE in disease, even prior to the discovery of linkage of apoE4 to late-onset AD. Using this hypothesis of the role of apoE in AD, Dr. Wisniewski has pioneered a potential novel approach to treat AD-related pathology by blocking the interaction of Aß and apoE.  In addition, Dr. Wisniewski has been developing strategies for the prevention of amyloid β accumulation and its removal in AD using non-toxic, highly immunogenic Aβ homologous peptides as “vaccines”. This approach has been shown to be efficacious in a number of animal models of AD.

The use of this “vaccination” approach for prion disease was pioneered by Dr. Wisniewski's group. His laboratory has shown for the first time that both a passive and active vaccination approach is effective in animal and tissue culture models of prion disease. Significantly, Dr. Wisniewski's laboratory developed an oral mucosal prion vaccination, which is the first vaccine that has been shown to prevent prion peripheral infection in wild-type animals. In addition, Dr. Wisniewski’s laboratory was the first to show that metal chelation has potential as a novel therapeutic approach for prion diseases.

Dr. Wisniewski's laboratory has also been active in the development of diagnostic methods for the detection of amyloid deposits in both AD and prion disease by mMRI and 2-photon microscopy.  These various studies by Dr. Wisniewsk's laboratory have helped direct our greater understanding of abnormal protein accumulation in the brain towards diagnostic and therapeutic interventions.

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Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, Stanford University (confirmed)

Dr. Wyss-Coray received a PhD in Immunology from the University of Berne, Switzerland, and did postdoctoral training in Neuroimmunology at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. He continued his training as an Instructor in Neurology at UCSF and the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco where he later became Assistant Professor and group leader. In 2002 he moved to Stanford University where he is currently Associate Professor in Neurology and Neurological Sciences and a member of the Neuroscience and Immunology graduate programs. He is also a Research Career Scientist at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. His laboratory tries to understand the role of immune and injury responses in neurodegeneration, pursuing the hypothesis that failing or dysfunctional immune responses underlie or contribute to the demise of the aging brain.

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Michael Wolfe, PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School (confirmed)

Michael S. Wolfe received his B.S. in chemistry in 1984 from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science and earned his Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry in 1990 from the University of Kansas.  After postdoctoral stints at the University of Kansas (medicinal chemistry) and the NIH (cell biology), he joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee in Memphis in 1994.  In 1999, he became Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, where his work has focused on understanding the molecular basis of Alzheimer’s disease and identifying effective approaches for pharmacological intervention.  In 2006, Dr. Wolfe founded the Laboratory for Experimental Alzheimer Drugs (LEAD) at Harvard Medical School.

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

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.

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Jianhua Zhou, PhD, University of Massachusetts Medical School (confirmed)

Dr. Jianhua Zhou was graduated from Fudan University, Shanghai, PR. China. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from University of Pittsburgh in 1994. He worked as a postdoctoral research under Dr. Kenneth Kosik at Harvard Medical School, Brigham & Women's Hospital until he moved to New England Medical Center and then to University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is currently an assistant professor at Department of Medicine of UMass Medical School. His major focus is to investigate molecular basis of neurodegenerative diseases. During the last few years, he has made contribution to development of cell based assays for identification of compounds that regulate alternative splicing of the SMN and tau genes.