When
October 28, 2024
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm ET
Where
Organizer
Featured Speakers
Merit Cudkowicz, MD, MSc
Chief, Neurology Department, Massachusetts General Hospital
Director, Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS
Julianne Dorn Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Merit Cudkowicz is the Director of the Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS, Chief of Neurology at Mass General, Director and the Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cudkowicz’s research and clinical activities are dedicated to the study and treatment of people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Dr. Cudkowicz is one of the founders and past Co-Chairs of the Northeast ALS Consortium (NEALS), a group of over 134 clinical sites in the United States, Canada, Europe and the Middle East
dedicated to performing collaborative clinical trials and research in ALS. She has brought innovations to accelerate the development of treatments for people with ALS, including senior role in first antisense oligonucleotide treatment for a neurological disorder (SOD1 ALS), adaptive trial designs, central IRB – all with goal to bring the best treatments rapidly. Dr. Cudkowicz is Principal Investigator of the Clinical Coordination Center for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Neurology Network of Excellence in Clinical Trials (NeuroNEXT). Dr. Cudkowicz is launching the first platform trial initiative in ALS, the HEALEY ALS Platform Trial, a program that will greatly accelerate therapy development in ALS.
Dr. Cudkowicz received the American Academy of Neurology 2009 Sheila Essay ALS award, the 2017 Forbes Norris Award from the International MND Alliance, the 2017 Pinnacle Award from the Boston Chamber of Commerce and the 2019 Ray Adams American Neurological Association Award. A dedicated educator, Dr. Cudkowicz mentors many young neurologists in clinical investigation of ALS and related neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Cudkowicz completed her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and obtained a medical degree in the Health Science and Technology program of Harvard Medical School. She served her internship at Beth Israel Hospital in New York and her neurology residency and fellowship at MGH. She also obtained a master’s degree in Clinical Epidemiology from the Harvard School of
Public Health.
Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D.
Director, McCance Center for Brain Health
Director, Genetics and Aging Research Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital
Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology, Harvard University
Dr. Tanzi is the Director of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health, Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit, and Co-Director of the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND) at Massachusetts General Hospital. He also serves as the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Tanzi is a co-founder of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, for which he serves as the Chair of the Research Leadership Group.
Dr. Tanzi co-discovered the first Alzheimer’s disease (AD) gene, the amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene, and the two other early-onset familial AD genes, presenilin 1 and presenilin 2. As leader of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Alzheimer’s Genome Project, Dr. Tanzi identified several other AD genes, including CD33, the first AD gene shown to regulate neuroinflammation in AD. He also discovered the Wilson’s disease gene and contributed to the identification of several other neurological disease genes, including the first familial ALS gene, SOD1.
Dr. Tanzi’s team was the first to use human stem cells to create three-dimensional mini human brain organoids and 3D neural-glial culture models of AD, dubbed “Alzheimer’s-in-a-Dish”. These models were the first to recapitulate all three key AD pathological hallmarks and have made drug screening exponentially faster and cheaper. He and his team have successfully used these organoids to screen for approved drugs and natural products that can be repurposed to treat AD brain pathology. Combinations of these drugs are now being tested in AD clinical trials. Dr. Tanzi has help to develop several novel therapies for AD including gamma secretase modulators targeting amyloid pathology, for which a phase 1 clinical trial is being prepared. Dr. Tanzi also recently discovered that beta-amyloid plays a functional role in the brain as a host-defense peptide, leading to the “antimicrobial protection hypothesis” of AD.
Dr. Tanzi serves as Chair of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Research Leadership Group and on numerous scientific advisory and editorial boards, He has published over 700 research papers (160,000 citations) and is one of the top 50 most cited neuroscientists in the world. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received the highest awards in his field, including the Metropolitan Life Foundation Award, Potamkin Prize, Ronald Reagan Award, Oneness in Humanity Award, Silver Innovator Award, the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, the Brain Research Foundation Award, and the Kary Mullis Award for Medical Research. He was named to TIME magazine’s list of TIME100 Most Influential People in the World. Dr. Tanzi is also a New York Times bestselling author, who has co-authored the books Decoding Darkness, and bestsellers, Super Brain, Super Genes, and The Healing Self, for which he has hosted several television shows on PBS.