13th International Conference on Myasthenia Gravis (1)

Speakers

Organizers

Robert B. Nelson, PhD

Lundbeck Research USA

Bob Nelson is a Research Fellow at Lundbeck Research USA, a company specializing in the development of therapeutics for CNS diseases. Previous to joining Lundbeck in 2010, Bob was a research investigator at Pfizer and overall has 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Bob received his doctorate from Northwestern University in 1987 followed by two post-doctoral fellowships working in the laboratories of Robert Siman at DuPont and Huntington Potter at Harvard Med School. Bob now leads one of two research groups at the Lundbeck site in Paramus, NJ, investigating how changes in the immune system initiate or promote Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases, with the goal of designing therapeutics that arrest these pathological changes. The Lundbeck Neuroinflammation unit takes a broad view of seeking the best disease intervention points by studying the interactions between the two main arms of the immune system (innate and adaptive), and the interactions between vascular immune cells (such as monocytes and T-cells) and the brain's immune cells (such as microglia and astrocytes).

Robert L. Martone

Covance Biomarker Center of Excellence

Robert Martone is Neuroscience Therapeutic Area Lead for the Covance Biomarker Center of Excellence. He has extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry leading neuroscience drug discovery and technology teams through all phases of discovery from target identification through clinical trials with expertise in both small molecule and protein therapeutics. He also has several years of academic research experience in molecular neurobiology, with a focus on the molecular genetics of familial neuropathies, and CNS tumor biomarker development.

Ken Jones, PhD

Forest Research Institute

Ken received his PhD in Physiology at Rutgers University studying neuronalnetworks that control behaviors of model organisms. During postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School with Robert Baughman he developed mammalian primary cell culture techniques to map NMDA and AMPA receptors at synaptic and extrasynaptic sites. His subsequent research in biotech and pharmaceutical companies has provided a number of promising novel drug targets for psychiatric and neurological disorders. At Synaptic Pharmaceutical Corp he co-discovered the heterodimeric nature of GABAB receptors, a newphotoreceptor that regulates circadian rhythms, as well as several novel hypothalamic neuropeptide receptors. In his most recent position at Lundbeck Research (Paramus, NJ) he was responsible for capital and process improvements that dramatically improved assay throughput in the HTS group, and he served leadership roles in a handful of early to late-stage drug discovery projects. He has enjoyed co-organizing a variety of NYAS symposium under the auspices of the Biochemical Pharmacology Discussion Group.

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

Brian T. Gold, PhD

University of Kentucky

Dr. Gold is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Kentucky (UK) College of Medicine. He is also a faculty affiliate of UK's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging and Magnetic Resonance Imaging Center. Dr. Gold is the Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at UK, serving as a mentor to postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate researchers. Dr. Gold received his Ph.D. in psychology (cognitive neuroscience focus) from York University in 1999. He then did his postdoctoral training at Washington University. Dr. Gold's research focuses on characterizing cognitive and brain changes associated with normal aging, early Alzheimer's disease (AD), and preclinical AD. In addition, he is investigating how certain lifestyle variables (e.g., exercise, education) may slow cognitive decline and brain aging. A multimodal imaging approach is employed, making use of functional magnetic resonance imaging and structural imaging methods such as volumetric assessment and diffusion tensor imaging. Dr. Gold's research is funded through grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. Dr. Gold is currently on the editorial board for the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and serves as an ad hoc reviewer for many top neuroscience journals. Dr. Gold serves on several scientific advisory boards including the Scientific Advisory Committee for Dementia Research and Prevention, Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

Simon Lovestone, PhD, MRCPsych

MRC Centre for Neurodegeneration Research, London

Simon Lovestone is Director of Research, King's Health partners (www.kingshealthpartners.org), Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London (www.iop.kcl.ac.uk) and director of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health and Unit for Dementia at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London (www.slam.nhs.uk/brc). He has research interests in the regulation of tau phosphorylation and in the search for genetic and other biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease and related conditions.

John C. Morris, MD

Washington University School of Medicine

John C. Morris, MD, is the Harvey A. and Dorismae Hacker Friedman Distinguished Professor of Neurology; Professor of Pathology and Immunology; Professor of Physical Therapy; Professor of Occupational Therapy; and Director of the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Memory and Aging Project at Washington University School of Medicine. He is also Director of the Harvey A. and Dorismae Friedman Center for Aging at Washington University. Dr. Morris earned his medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, New York. He completed residencies in internal medicine at Akron General Medical Center and in neurology at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, both in Ohio, and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuropharmacology at Washington University School of Medicine. Research interests of Dr. Morris include healthy aging and Alzheimer dementia, antecedent biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease in nondemented elderly to evaluate risk for Alzheimer dementia, and trials of investigational drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer dementia.

Dr. Morris has authored or coauthored 4 books and more than 350 published articles. Dr. Morris is a member of several professional societies, including the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association, and serves on the editorial board for the Annals of Neurology. He serves also on numerous scientific and community advisory boards, including the Medical and Scientific Advisory Council of the national Alzheimer’s Association. He has received many honors and awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alzheimer’s Association (2004); the MetLife Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer’s Disease (2004); the Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick’s, Alzheimer’s, and Related Dementias from the American Academy of Neurology (2005); the Physician-Scientist Lifetime Achievement Award, Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation, St. Louis, MO (2005); Neville Grant Award for Clinical Excellence from Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, MO (2006); Washington University Academic Women’s Network Mentor Award (2008); the American Neurological Association 2009 Soriano Lectureship; and the Carl and Gerty Cori Faculty Achievement Award, Washington University (2010). He is ranked in the top 1% of investigators in the field of Neuroscience and Behavior by Essential Science Indicators database.

John Olichney, MD

University of California, Davis

Dr. Olichney grew up in New York and graduated from Stuyvesant High School. He did his undergraduate work at UC Berkeley and received a Bachelor's degree in Neurobiology. Dr. Olichney attended medical school at University of California, Irvine. He completed his neurology residency at UC San Diego, where he also completed three years of fellowship training—two years in Geriatric Neurology and one year in Traumatic Brain Injury and Neuroscience. His mentors at UCSD included fellowship director Dr. Leon Thal, Dr. Vicente Iragui, Robert Katzman and Professors Marta Kutas and David Salmon. In 1995, Dr. Olichney joined the Department of Neurosciences faculty at University of California, San Diego, where he served as Assistant and Associate Professor. In 2006, he transferred to UC Davis, where he is currently Professor of Neurology, and serves as Clinical Core Leader for their NIA-funded Alzheimer's Disease Center. He is responsible for overseeing a large multi-disciplinary clinical research program in dementia, including their Alzheimer's disease clinical trials unit. He also directs the Cognitive Electrophysiology and Neuroimaging (CEaN) Laboratory in the Center for Mind and Brain in Davis, where he is active in translational cognitive neuroscience research. His main research focus is on the physiology of human memory function during normal aging and disease, using the techniques of event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional MRI (fMRI). His research has been funded by multiple NIH/NIA grants, private foundations (including two NARSAD awards), the Dept. of Veteran's Affairs, and the state of California's Alzheimer's Disease Program. He is also currently participating in four multi-center clinical trials as UC Davis' site principal investigator. He has authored or co-authored over 45 scientific articles published in the medical literature.

Reisa Sperling, MD

Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Dr. Reisa Sperling is a neurologist, specializing in dementia and imaging research, and an Associate Professor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sperling is the Director of the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women's Hospital and serves as the Director of the Alzheimer's disease Neuroimaging Program of the Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Sperling's research is focused on the early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease. She is the Principal Investigator on multiple NIH and Foundation grants including a new National Institute on Aging Program Project grant—the Harvard Aging Brain Study—and oversees a number of clinical trials of potential disease-modifying therapeutics in early Alzheimer's disease. She was recently chosen to lead the National Institute on Aging–Alzheimer's Association working group to develop recommendations for the study of "Preclinical Alzheimer's disease."

* Additional bios to follow.