DEFEATING DEMENTIA:

Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray is the D.H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences and the Director of the Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Stanford University. His lab studies brain aging and neurodegeneration with a focus on age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease.

The Wyss-Coray research team discovered that circulatory blood factors can modulate brain structure and function and factors from young organisms can rejuvenate old brains. Current studies focus on the molecular basis of the systemic communication with the brain by employing a combination of genetic, cell biology, and –omics approaches in killifish, mice, and humans.

Dr. Wyss-Coray has presented his ideas at Global TED, the Tencent WE Summit, and the World Economic Forum, and he was voted Time Magazine’s “The Health Care 50” most influential people transforming health care in 2018. He co-founded Alkahest Inc. and several other companies targeting Alzheimer’s and neurodegeneration and has been the recipient of an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a Zenith Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, and a NOMIS Foundation Award.

Ryan Watts is the Chief Executive Officer of Denali Therapeutics. He is a co-founder, President and a member of the Board of Directors.

Under Ryan’s leadership, Denali has advanced multiple therapeutic candidates into clinical testing for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and ALS. Denali has invented a proprietary blood-brain barrier platform for delivery of therapeutic proteins to the brain. Ryan has also led efforts to raise significant capital to advance Denali’s therapeutic pipeline and has been instrumental in forging partnerships to accelerate the discovery and development of medicines for neurodegeneration.

Ryan previously served as Director of the Department of Neuroscience at Genentech. During his tenure there, he led the company’s re-entry into neuroscience. The Watts laboratory focused on drug discovery for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, with an emphasis on understanding mechanisms of neurodegeneration guided by human genetics. His lab also studied various aspects of blood-brain barrier biology and delivery.

Ryan obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Department of Biological Sciences and his B.S. in Biology from the University of Utah.

Dr. Daniela Kaufer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley. She was born and raised in Israel where she studied Biological Sciences at Technion, and received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biochemistry at Hebrew University. She was a Human Frontiers Post-doctoral Fellow at Stanford University, before joining the UC Berkeley faculty in 2005.

Daniela’s lab studies brain plasticity throughout life in face of stress and neurological insults, with a particular focus on plasticity involving adult neural stem cells and across the neurovascular unit – neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and the components of blood brain barrier.

Dr. Sara Kenkare-Mitra is President and Head of Research and Development at Alector. She leads all aspects of the company’s immuno-neurology and oncology R&D efforts, including oversight of the research, development, clinical, manufacturing, regulatory, and related functions. 

Dr. Kenkare-Mitra was previously Senior Vice President, Development Sciences at Genentech, where she served as a member of the research and development leadership team, overseeing the transition of molecules from discovery to the clinic and their continued translation into medicines through clinical development. During her 23-year tenure, she led a large, integrated global organization of approximately 650 employees, and played a key role in the filing of more than 100 Investigational New Drug/clinical trial applications around the world, and the approval of 15 medicines for diverse diseases, including cancers and neurological diseases.

Dr. Kenkare-Mitra received her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of California, San Francisco, where she also stayed on as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Clinical Pharmacology before joining Genentech. Dr. Kenkare-Mitra also holds adjunct faculty positions in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco and at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. Dr. Kenkare-Mitra is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

She has been widely recognized for her work in the industry with awards such as the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists’ Alice E. Till Advancement of Women in Pharmaceutical Sciences Recognition, Endpoints’ 20 Most Extraordinary Women in Biopharma, Fierce Pharma’s Fiercest Women in the Life Sciences, and the University of California, San Francisco’s Distinguished Alumnus of the Year.

Dr. Martin Kampmann is an Associate Professor in the UCSF Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and the IND. He received his BA and MA in Natural Sciences (Biochemistry) from Cambridge University and his PhD from the Rockefeller University, where he used biophysical approaches to characterize the architecture and dynamics of the nuclear pore complex with Dr. Günter Blobel.

As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Jonathan Weissman’s group at UCSF, Dr. Kampmann spearheaded the development of a functional genomics platform that makes it possible to robustly identify human genes relevant to a cellular process of interest, and to elucidate cellular pathways and networks using systematic genetic interaction maps. One important application of the screening platform is the identification of genes that control the sensitivity of cells to a given drug. This approach can identify the relevant cellular targets of new compounds, predict drug-resistance mechanisms, and guide the rational development of combination therapies.

Currently, the goal of Dr. Kampmann’s research is to understand how human cells maintain their proteins in a functional and balanced state. The cellular pathways safeguarding proteome function and balance are termed the “proteostasis network.” Dr. Kampmann aims to elucidate how the proteostasis network dynamically adapts to the needs of the cell and how it is challenged and rewired in diseases, especially cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Identification of proteostasis factors that control formation, spread, and clearance of protein aggregates associated with neurodegenerative diseases will shed light on the disease mechanisms and reveal potential therapeutic targets.