• 

  Frédéric Destrebecq

  Executive Director of European Brain Council - EBC

  The EBC is a platform for patients, health professionals, scientists & industry that promotes brain research in Europe and improved quality of life for patients.

  More information about speaker

• 

  Thierry Laugel

  Managing Partner at Kurma PartnersMore information about speaker
• 

  Andrea Soto

  LSP Dementia Fund

  Andrea joined LSP as an analyst in 2021. Andrea is part of the LSP Dementia fund focused on all stages of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases drug and medtech developments and is involved in all stages of the investment process, particularly on deal flow screening and scientific due diligence.
  
  Before joining LSP, Andrea worked as a senior consultant and team leader at FFUND, a boutique consultancy working with start-ups in health and life sciences. Andrea supported these companies with non-dilutive and dilutive funding applications, business strategy, and consortium building while coordinating a team of consultants and interns working in parallel projects.
  
  Andrea received her PhD from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands in behavioural and cognitive neurosciences. Her research focused on the relation between interval timing and neurodegenerative processes, as well as on the interaction of stress and social environment on brain function and behaviour. She worked in several translational models of these phenomena, from fruit flies to humans. Her research and innovative method are published in several renown journals. Prior to her PhD, Andrea became a Medical Doctor at the National and Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad National Autónoma de México, UNAM), during which she conducted research with animal Alzheimer models and clinical Multiple Sclerosis patients. Andrea lives in Haarlem with her husband and over 40 houseplants.

  More information about speaker

• 

  Beth Shafer

  Head of Neuroscience, Drug Discovery Sciences and Externalization Business Development at Takeda

  Dr. Beth Shafer is the Head of Neuroscience, Drug Discovery Sciences, and all R&D Externalization Business Development at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd and is based in Boston. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals and Arcellx Inc. Before joining Takeda, she was the Head of Ophthalmology and Disease Area X NIBR BD&L, the latter encompassed Hepatology, Nephrology, and Benign Hematology at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Cambridge, MA. In her current position at Takeda, she drives strategic decisions for Neuroscience Therapeutic Areas and also executes and leads BD professionals to execute industry-leading transactions to reshape the Takeda portfolio with innovative opportunities and capabilities. At Novartis, she sat on the Disease Area Leadership at NIBR and helped to bolster their portfolio and research strategies by fashioning and executing external partnership solutions. Dr. Shafer has led countless transactions teams, global scouting teams, and cross-functional pharmaceutical project teams to enable strategic decisions, execute collaboration, licensing, divestment transactions and equity investments, including her time at F. Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, Switzerland, where she was a Business Development Director from 2011-2016. Prior to her time in Pharma, Beth has consulted for Biotechs with her extensive academic background in the neurosciences, molecular biology and biophysics; she also holds Masters degrees in Molecular Biology & Biophysics from Columbia University in New York and PhD in Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She also completed her post-doctoral fellowship at UCSD.

  More information about speaker

• 

  Norman Putzki

  Senior Vice President & Global Head of Drug Development Neuroscience at Novartis

  Norman Putzki, M.D., Ph.D., based in Basel, Switzerland
  Global Development Unit Head Neuroscience
  
  Norman Putzki studied Human Medicine in Germany, the United
  Kingdom and Switzerland and graduated from Essen University (Essen, Germany) as M.D.
  
  While pursuing medical training with focus on Neurology, he earned his PhD ‘magna cum laude’ in the Department of Neurology at Essen University by investigating postural reflexes and the NDMA pathway in Parkinson’s Disease. Norman performed residency training in Internal Medicine and Neurology in Essen, University College London (Institute of Neurology Queen’s Square) and University of Berne (Switzerland).
  
  During his academic career in clinical Neurology in various settings, his focus was on inflammatory disorders of the central nervous system such as Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Norman led clinical and research groups in two academic centers of MS before joining pharma industry in 2010 (Medical Research, Biogen Idec, Cambridge, MA, US).
  
  In 2013, Norman joined Global Neuroscience Development in Basel as development lead for fingolimod (Gilenya) and consecutively held leadership roles of increasing seniority in drug development. Later-on he led the US Neuroscience Medical organization 2016-2019 before returning to Global Drug Development. During his tenure, he has been leading teams around the globe to various new indications, approvals and launches within the neuroscience portfolio. Norman has a strong background and broad experience in basic and clinical neurology having performed scientific work in the areas of regulatory T cell function and epidemiologic aspects of MS. Norman is an author/co-author of >50 peer reviewed publications and he has authored 4 books. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.

  More information about speaker

• 

  Raúl Martín-Ruiz

  Partner at Ysios Capital
• 

  Anjan Aralahalli

  Venture Partner at CTI Life Sciences
• 

  Lubor Gaal

  Senior Vice President and Head of Europe at Locust Walk
• 

  Steve Ferguson

  Deputy Director of Licensing & Entrepreneurship at National Institutes of Health - NIH

“The Biomarker Race in Neurodegeneration: Theories, Lessons, and Opportunities”

How Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers have transformed clinical practice and drug development.
Biomarkers for neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration: are we there yet?
A way forward for neurological biomarkers.

• 

  William Hu

  Chief of Cognitive Neurology at Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research

Background: Disease-modifying therapies for Parkinson’s disease (PD) often failed when going through clinical trials. One of the main reasons for these failures is the fact that preclinical research is routinely conducted by relying on suboptimal animal models. In other words, there is a pressing need for the development and characterization of relevant animal models of PD (nonhuman primates in particular) better mimicking the known neuropathological hallmarks of this disorder. Although it is well known that (i) PD typically is a human disorder and (ii) there is a time-dependent loss of neuromelanin-pigmented dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra (SNpc), any potential link between neuromelanin (NMel) content and dopaminergic cell vulnerability has long been neglected simply because most commonly used laboratory animals lack NMel. Here we took advantage of adeno-associated viral vectors encoding human tyrosinase (the enzyme mediating NMel synthesis) for driving a time-dependent NMel pigmentation of dopaminergic neurons in the SNpc of macaques up to similar levels as observed in elderly humans. NMel-pigmented neurons displayed Lewy body intracellular inclusions together with a progressive cell death and a pro-inflammatory phenotype mediated by activated microglial cells and infiltrating macrophages. Of particular importance, this model provided evidence showing that endogenous synucleinopathy is indeed triggered by NMel accumulation, further appointing NMel as an appealing target for PD therapeutics (instead of targeting alpha-synuclein in itself).

• 

  José L. Lanciego MD, PhD

  Staff Scientist and Director, Laboratory of Functional Basal Ganglia Neuroanatomy at Center for Applied Medical Research, University of Navarra