Learning from Cancer to Advance Neurodegeneration Drug Discovery and Development

Speakers

Organizers

Howard Fillit, MD

The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation

Howard Fillit, MD, a geriatrician, neuroscientist and a leading expert in Alzheimer's disease, is the founding Executive Director of the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF). The ADDF's mission is to accelerate the discovery and development of drugs to prevent, treat and cure Alzheimer's disease, related dementias and cognitive aging. Dr. Fillit has had a distinguished academic medicine career at The Rockefeller University and The Mount Sinai School of Medicine where he is a clinical professor of geriatrics and medicine and professor of neurobiology. He is a co-author of more than 250 scientific and clinical publications, and is the senior editor of the leading international Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology. Previously, Dr. Fillit was the Corporate Medical Director for Medicare at New York Life, responsible for over 125,000 Medicare managed care members in five regional markets. Dr. Fillit has received several awards and honors including the Rita Hayworth Award for Lifetime Achievement. He also serves as a consultant to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, health care organizations and philanthropies.

Diana Shineman, PhD

The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation

Diana Shineman, PhD is the Director for Scientific Affairs at the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, where she develops and manages the Foundation’s drug discovery and development grant programs and strategic initiatives. Combining scientific and business expertise, the ADDF manages its research funding portfolio to balance risk, stage of development, and drug target mechanism of action, ensuring that grants meet key milestones before securing follow-on funding. As a measure of success, projects funded by the ADDF have gone on to garner nearly $2 billion in follow-on funding. The ADDF also works strategically with foundations, government and industry partners to tackle unmet needs in the field. As an example of such an initiative, Dr. Shineman led an interdisciplinary effort to standardize animal model study design to improve research efficiency and translatability. Diana joined the ADDF in 2008. She earned a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania working in the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research led by Drs. Virginia Lee and John Trojanowski. She also worked as an Editorial Intern for the Journal of Clinical Investigation and was an active member of the Penn Biotechnology Group. Diana received a BA in Biology with a Nutrition concentration from Cornell University, where she was named a Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research Scholar. In addition to maintaining various professional memberships, Diana has also authored numerous articles and peer-reviewed publications.

Sonya Dougal, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Keynote Speaker

Jane A. Driver, MD, MPH

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Jane A. Driver, MD, MPH is a member of the Geriatrics Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) at VA Boston Healthcare System the Division of Aging, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Division of Medical Oncology, Dan Farber Cancer Institute. She is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Trained as both a geriatrician and an oncologist, her research focuses on the epidemiology, prediction and prevention of cancer and neurodegenerative disease. She is currently investigating the link between cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as new methods of early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. With her collaborator Dr. Ping Lu, she is investigating the role of the enzyme Pin1 in the development of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. She is currently examining the role of metabolic therapies in the prevention of both families of diseases. Dr. Driver has received research grants from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Hartford Foundation, the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation and Harvard Medical School. In addition to her research work, Dr. Driver cares for vulnerable elderly Veterans with memory disorders and is co-director of the Older Adult Hematologic Malignancy Program at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. She teaches medical students, medical residents, geriatric fellows, and provides research mentorship for trainees and young faculty in both geriatrics and oncology.

Speakers

Kurt R. Brunden, PhD

University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Kurt R. Brunden is Director of Drug Discovery and a Research Professor in the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he oversees drug discovery programs in the areas of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Parkinson’s disease. Prior to joining CNDR in 2007, Dr. Brunden was an executive in the biotechnology sector, where he served as VP of Research at Gliatech, Inc. and later as Sr. VP of Drug Discovery at Athersys, Inc. In these positions, he initiated and managed drug discovery programs in AD, cognitive enhancement, schizophrenia, inflammation, metabolic disease and cancer. Prior to his time in industry, Dr. Brunden was an NIH-funded faculty member within the Biochemistry Department at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, with a research focus on the regulation of myelination. He obtained his BS degree (magna cum laude) from Western Michigan University, with dual majors of Biology and Health Chemistry, and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Purdue University, with a post-doctoral fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Brunden has over 85 scientific publications, and multiple issued and pending U.S. and PCT patents.

Stuart K. Calderwood, PhD

Harvard Medical School

Dr. Calderwood obtained his PhD from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England in 1978. He subsequently carried out postdoctoral fellowships studying the mammalian stress response at Newcastle (1978-1980) and Stanford University (1980-1984). He was recruited to The Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School as an Assistant Professor in 1985, carrying out studies on mechanism of transcription of molecular chaperone genes. He became Associate Professor in 1991. Dr. Calderwood then became Director of the Molecular Stress Response Center and Professor of Medicine, Boston University (2002-2003). In 2003 Dr Calderwood became Director of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Professor of Radiation Oncology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Harvard Medical School and remains so until today. Dr. Calderwood has published extensively on regulation of molecular chaperone gene expression in cancer and aging as well as the immune properties of heat shock proteins leading to over 200 publications in peer reviewed journal and books and speaking engagements at local, national and international meetings. Dr. Calderwood’s research has been continuously funded through the NCI since1986. He has been a charted member of multiple NIH study sections since 1989.

Gary Landreth, PhD

Case Western Reserve University

Dr. Landreth received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the University of Kansas in 1972. He then completed a PhD in the Neurosciences Program at the University of Michigan, including a year of study at the National Institute of Medical Research in London. He did postdoctoral work in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford. Dr. Landreth was appointed to the faculty of the Medical University of South Carolina, where he worked for 9 years. He moved to Case Western Reserve University and the Alzheimer Research Laboratory in 1989 and is currently a professor in the Department of Neurosciences. His work over the past 25 years has focused on investigation of Alzheimer’s disease and the development of new drugs for its treatment.

Tamara Maes, PhD

Oryzon Genomics S.A.

Dr. Tamara Maes is Chemist by training with a Biotechnology specialty at the University of Ghent (Belgium). She received her PhD in Biotechnology from the University of Ghent, Belgium working on developmental genetics. Afterwards, she was a European Union postdoctoral fellow and worked in the CSIC of Barcelona, Spain. In 2000, she founded Oryzon, where she has been since then the Chief Scientific Officer and the responsible for the programs and products of the company. She has produced many scientific papers and patents internationally and has developed innovative HTS methods for functional genomics. Under her supervision, the company identified biomarkers for minimally invasive detection of endometrial cancer in post-menopausic women and she was responsible for developing the discovery stages and the clinical and regulatory development for GynEC-Dx, the first marketed product (in the Diagnostics area) of the company. Also under her supervision, the company identified early human biomarkers in several neurodegenerative disorders and in 2008 proposed to the board to start a drug discovery program on LSD1. This program was soon split in two branches: molecules designed for CNS uses and molecules optimized for oncological indications. This oncological program yielded ORY-1001, this molecule got the orphan drug status from the European Medicine Agency and is currently in clinical Phase I/IIA for acute leukemia and has been licensed recently to Roche in a multimillion dollar deal. The CNS program yielded ORY-2001 a dual LSD1-MAOB inhibitor expected to enter in clinic for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease by the end of 2015.

David M. Roy, PhD

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

David Roy is in his final year at Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program in New York. While in medical school, he completed a two-year HHMI research fellowship studying the role of PTPRD in cancer. He later received his PhD in 2015 from Weill Cornell Medical College under the supervision of Dr. Timothy Chan at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His graduate work focused on studying genomic alterations in glioma and developing computational strategies to identify driver genes involved in malignant transformation and metastasis. Currently, he is exploring the role of arm-level copy number alterations in cancer progression.

Stephen M. Strittmatter, MD, PhD

Yale University School of Medicine

Stephen M. Strittmatter, MD, PhD, was born in St. Louis, MO and earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, summa cum laude. He completed MD and PhD training at Johns Hopkins in 1986 with mentorship from Solomon H. Snyder, MD.  He then moved to Massachusetts General Hospital for a medical internship and an Adult Neurology residency. While at MGH, he worked as a Research Fellow with Mark Fishman, MD exploring the molecular basis of axonal guidance. He joined the faculty of Yale University in 1993. He is currently holds the Vincent Coates Professorship of Neurology at Yale and is a Founding Director of the Yale Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair Interdepartmental Program. He is also Director of the Yale Memory Disorders Clinic. Over 20 years, his laboraotry work has contributed to defining a molecular basis for axonal guidance during development, and neural repair after adult injury. More recently, his laboratory has also explored ligand-receptor interactions in degenerative dementias. In analyzing Amyloid–beta oligomer toxicity, his work has defined a pathway from PrPC to mGluR5 to Fyn. Dr. Strittmatter’s research has been recognized by the Ameritec Award, John Merck Scholar Award, Donaghue Investigator Award, McKnight Foundation Brain and Memory Disorders Award, Alzheiemr's Association Zenith Fellow Award, and Senator Jacob Javits Award in the Neurosciences. 

Li-Huei Tsai, PhD

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Tsai is the Director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and Picower Professor of Neuroscience. She is interested in the mechanisms of neurological disorders accompanied by learning and memory impairments, represented both by neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), and also by neurodevelopmental disorders. In the past two decades, Dr. Tsai's laboratory has contributed to the study of neuronal development and function in both the developing and adult brain, and how neuronal function and circuitry may be dysregulated in disorders of cognitive impairment. Her early work demonstrated p35 to be a neuron-specific activator of the serine/threonine kinase Cdk5, and that the Cdk5/p35 complex plays a critical role in cortical development. Her work showed that dysregulation of Cdk5 causes neuronal demise, and found that a mouse model of Cdk5 hyperactivation exhibits AD-like neurodegeneration and memory impairment. She also found that promoting chromatin remodeling using HDAC inhibitors ameliorates cognitive deficits, even after the onset of neurodegeneration. Her lab identified histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2) as a key negative regulator of genes implicated in activity regulation, synaptogenesis, and synaptic plasticity. The lab also studies genomic integrity in neurons and have identified a novel mechanism involving DNA double strand breaks in regulating gene expression in neurons.

Raymond Scott Turner, MD, PhD

Georgetown University

Dr. Turner is a Professor of Neurology and Director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC. Previously, he was Chief of the Neurology Service at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Neurology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was awarded MD and PhD degrees from Emory University, Atlanta, and completed internship, residency, and fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is Board-Certified in psychiatry and neurology. Turner has received prestigious awards including a research fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Paul Beeson Scholarship, and a Washington Monuments Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, National Capital Chapter. Turner lectures widely, serves as a reviewer for granting agencies and biomedical journals, and has published more than 75 peer-reviewed papers, editorials, and book chapters. Turner is directing clinical studies sponsored by industry, the NIH, or both, at Georgetown University. Most recently, he was the PI of a multi-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2 trial of resveratrol for individuals with mild-moderate Alzheimer’s disease - in collaboration with the NIA-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS). For more information, see memory.georgetown.edu.

Claes Wahlestedt, MD, PhD

University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Claes Wahlestedt, MD, PhD is Leonard M. Miller Professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and is working on a range of drug discovery and translational efforts in his roles as Associate Dean and Center Director for Therapeutic Innovation. The author of 200+ papers with 30,000+ citations, his ongoing research projects concern epigenetics, mammalian transcriptomics, noncoding RNAs, cancer, neuroscience, and drug discovery across several therapeutic areas. A native of Sweden, Dr. Wahlestedt obtained his MD and PhD degrees from Lund University, and then went on to develop an international career in academia as well as in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining the University of Miami, Dr. Wahlestedt was a professor and director of neuroscience at the new Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (2005-2011). Before that he was an endowed professor of pharmacogenomics and chair of the Department for Genomics and Bioinformatics at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (1997-2005). He has also directed large drug discovery and biotechnology teams in the pharmaceutical industry for Astra-Zeneca, Pharmacia & Upjohn, and Pharmacia Corporation. His most recent biotechnology start-ups are CURNA Inc. (focusing on noncoding RNAs; acquired by OPKO Health in 2011) and Epigenetix Inc. (focusing on chromatin regulators).

Hui Zheng, PhD

Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. Hui Zheng gained research experience on Alzheimer’s disease both from industry (Merck Research Laboratories, 1991-1999) and academia (Baylor College of Medicine, 1999-present). She has a long-standing track record in understanding the biological and pathophysiological functions of the amyloid precursor protein and presenilins. Her work revealed APP as a synaptic adhesion protein and identified an intriguing role of presenilins in skin tumorigenesis. Recently, Dr. Zheng expanded her research effort to investigate the neuron-glia signaling pathways and intracellular clearance mechanisms in neuronal health and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Zheng holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair and is Director of the Huffington Center on Aging at Baylor College of Medicine. She serves on the Cellular & Molecular Biology of Neurodegeneration (CMND) Study Section, and is a member of the BrightFocus Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee and the Alzheimer’s Association Medical & Scientific Advisory Council.