Professor Bart De Strooper is the founding director of the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI). He is a researcher in Alzheimer's disease, and supervises laboratories based in the UK DRI at the Francis Crick Institute in London and in the VIB laboratory at the KU Leuven in Belgium. Bart De Strooper’s research is focussed on translating genetic findings into mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and drug targets. He is best known for his work on the presenilins and gamma-secretase, and more recently for his work on the cellular theory of Alzheimer’s Disease. He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship in 2020, and has received several awards including the Potamkin prize, the Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research, Alois Alzheimer’s prize, the highly prestigious Brain Prize 2018 and Commander in the Order of Leopold I.

Dr. del Campo’s main scientific interest is to understand the biological changes that underlie the different dementia types and translate this knowledge into applicable diagnostic tests and potential therapeutic targets. As translational neurobiologist, she has worked with human samples as well as different cell and animal models. She is currently co-leading highly collaborative studies analysing the proteome in different biofluids (CSF and plasma) from patients with different types of dementia (PRIDE and bPRIDE projects) to identify early and specific biomarker signatures that might be useful in clinical setting and trials. Understanding the molecular mechanisms behind those changes is also highly relevant, as it may reveal potential therapeutic targets. By combining -omics data (e.g. proteome and genome), she aims also to identify novel pathways and molecules involved in the pathogenesis of dementia.

Constance Delaby has a PhD in Biology and is a lecturer at the University of Montpellier, University Hospital of Montpellier, France. For the last 10 years, she has been developing clinical research projects focused on neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimer's disease, in the Biochemistry and Clinical Proteomics Laboratory (IRMB, Montpellier, France). Her projects are particularly focused on the characterization of diagnostic fluid biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease. For the last 4 years, she has joined the scientific team of the Sant Pau Memory Unit (Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques Sant Pau - Hospital de Sant Pau Barcelona, Spain) in order to continue the development of her research projects.

Aurore Delvenne is a PhD candidate in the department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology at Maastricht University. Her research focus on using proteomics and genetics to gain insight into the origin of Alzheimer's disease and related diseases. She is also particulary interested in understanding the implication of choroid plexus dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease.

Harriet Demnitz-King is a third year PhD student based in the Division of Psychiatry at University College London. Her main interest lies in utilising multi-domain approaches to investigate modifiable psychological risk and protective factors that affect resilience to dementia.

Dr. Jurre den Haan is a resident in Neurology and postdoctoral researcher at Amsterdam University Medical Center, location VUMC, in the Netherlands. He received his medical degree in 2014 and subsequently started his PhD at the Alzheimer Center Amsterdam focused on searching retinal biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease. Over the course of his PhD he collected retinal data in AD patients with in-vivo methods in the form of optical coherence tomography (angiography) (OCT(A)), fundus photography and fluorescence imaging. In addition he worked on several post-mortem projects assessing pathological hallmarks of AD in the retina and the use of curcumin as fluorescent marker for amyloid pathology. During his PhD he was a visiting researcher at Queen’s Square Neurology in London, the United Kingdom, where he focused on retinal thickness measured with OCT in posterior cortical atrophy an typical Alzheimer’s disease. In 2019, he defended his thesis ‘Retinal Imaging in Alzheimer’s Disease’ and started his clinical work in Neurology. Observing the heterogeneity in the emerging research field of retinal imaging in AD he was involved in forming the new Personal Interest Area (PIA) ‘The Eye as a Biomarker for AD’, and was installed as junior chair.

Dr. Florin Despa is on the faculty of the Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences and holds joint appointments within the Department of Neurology and Department of Neuroscience. His laboratory is funded by the National Institutes of Health and Alzheimer’s Association to study the role of circulating, amyloid-forming amylin in brain microvascular and Alzheimer’s pathologies. Prior to his arrival at The University of Kentucky in 2013, Dr. Despa was a faculty member in The Department of Pharmacology at The University of California, Davis (UC Davis), between 2008 and 2013. He trained in protein folding at The University of Chicago, as a postdoctoral fellow (2000-2004), and then as a research junior faculty (2004-2008), and in physical kinetics as a postdoctoral fellow of The Research Board of the K.U. Leuven (Belgium), between 1998 and 2000. Dr. Despa graduated from The Institute of Physics, Magurele-Bucharest (Romania) in 1997 with a thesis on off-centre diffusion mechanisms.

Dr. Detke is clinical drug development scientist/executive with over 20 years of research and leadership in biotech/pharma. He has experience with clinical trials across many CNS diseases and all phases of development, including many INDs and NDAs. He is Chief Medical Officer at Cortexyme, a clinical-phase biotech developing therapeutics for a specific pathogen, for the treatment of Alzheimer's and other degenerative disorders. Previously, as CMO at Embera NeuroTherapeutics, led clinical development of a novel combination drug for addictions. As CoMentis CMO, led clinical development of alpha7 ligands for Alzheimer's Disease and other disorders of cognition. As MedAvante CMO, led a team improving signal detection in CNS clinical trials. As Executive Director for Neuroscience at Lilly, responsible for all CNS assets in early phase development (Psychiatry, Neurology, Pain and Addiction). Previously at Lilly, Senior Medical Director responsible for global Phase 3 development for Cymbalta ($5B peak sales) and Phase 4 for Prozac. Undergraduate at Yale, MD/PhD at U. Penn. and Psychiatry Residency at Harvard/MGH/McLean. Over 70 manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journals, and an active member of scientific organizations such as ACNP, ASCP and SOBP. Board-certified Psychiatrist and adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine since 2000.

I’m a neurophysiologist with a strong background in biophysics electrophysiology and imaging. My main ongoing project relies on the functional, structural and molecular characterization of synaptic function, and neuron-glia crosstalk in physiological and pathological conditions. For this purpose in parallel to the studies using mouse models I’m developing 3D in vitro brain models using human cells from healthy subjects or patients. These new biological models, are aimed at developing new physiologically relevant in vivo platforms for the study of cell-cell interactions. My research in the field of neurophysiology always focused on the modulation of synaptic transmission in physiological and pathological conditions. My background education in physics made me able to play a key role in the development of multidisciplinary projects, in collaboration with engineers, medical doctors, biologists and SME, producing several publications. In the last years, my research interests are focusing on the impact of neuroinflammation in brain pathologies with major interest on the role played by microglia cells on neuron/microglial crosstalk with multidisciplinary approaches (electrophysiology, imaging, molecular and cellular biology, bio-fabrication). I’m currently working on the possibility to use retinal scan for AD diagnosis using specific ocular biomarkers.

My research is currently focused on understanding the role of defective proteostasis in the development of Alzheimer’s-like dementia in order to propose novel effective therapeutic approaches that might ameliorate cognitive decline. Starting in 2005, I dedicated my research on the studies of oxidative stress role in the development of neurodegenerative disease. Thanks to my experience at University of Kentucky in the laboratory of prof. D. Allan Butterfield I have been involved in the setting of proteomics approaches comprising redox proteomics. Through these use of techniques, my following research projects contributed to highlight the role of increased oxidative stress and dysfunctional protein degradation systems in the pathogenesis and progression of Alzheimer Disease-like dementia. Indeed, we demonstrated that the oxidative modification (carbonylation, protein bound HNE and nitration) of proteins, belonging to different degradation systems (proteasome and autophagy) impairs their functionality and contributes to the progression of the neurodegenerative process. Therefore, collected data postulated that aberrant proteostasis, observed in both Alzheimer’s and Down syndrome patients, is strictly associated with the increase of oxidative damage as result of compromised antioxidant response and faulty protein degradative systems. Recent studies revealed that chronic induction of the unfolded protein response has a prominent role in the development of AD- like dementia in DS brain. Indeed, the pharmacological rescue of UPR function leads to the reduction in neuropathological hallmarks and to decrease in protein oxidation in a mechanism involving the Nrf2 antioxidant response. The results obtained led to the publication of several articles on peer-reviewed journals and based on these we started to test a number of compounds for the treatment and prevention of cognitive decline in Down syndrome mice.

Marc Diamond, M.D. is the founding director of the Center for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases (CAND), a multidisciplinary translational research program. The CAND is part of the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute and exemplifies its ideal of uniting scientists with diverse interests to cure brain diseases. Dr. Diamond’s discoveries link common disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease to rare infectious prion disorders such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This has transformed our understanding of why neurogenerative diseases progress, and how different diseases arise. His lab has discovered that abnormal assemblies of the tau protein move between cells and serve as templates for their own replication. Dr. Diamond’s ideas have formed the basis of new therapeutic approaches for Alzheimer’s and related disorders. He holds multiple patents and is the inventor of a monoclonal antibody that is currently in clinical trials. He received his M.D. and residency training in Neurology at UCSF. He was on the faculty at UCSF from 2002-2009, and Washington University in St. Louis from 2009-2014. Since 2014, he has been at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Diamond is an internationally recognized expert on fundamental mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease. His groundbreaking research has been cited thousands of times by his scientific colleagues.

Dr. Robert Diaz Brinton is an internationally recognized expert in Alzheimer’s and is developing the first regenerative therapeutic for Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Brinton earned her Ph.D. as an NIH Predoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona and went on to Rockefeller University as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow and was recruited to University of Southern California in Los Angeles where she was Professor of Pharmacology, Biomedical Engineering and Neurology. Dr. Brinton returned to the University of Arizona as the inaugural Director of the Center for Innovation in Brain Science and Professor of Pharmacology, Neuroscience and Neurology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. The Center for Innovation in Brain Science is a hybrid university / biotech research environment with a focus on therapeutic development for neurodegenerative diseases of aging, Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s and ALS. Dr. Brinton’s research spans discovery, translational and clinical science and she has over 250 publications, multiple patents and founded 2 biotech start-ups. She serves on the National Institute of Health Director’s Advisory Committee, the National Institute on Aging Scientific Advisory Committee, and the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation Board of Governors. Her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement, the Alzheimer’s Association, and philanthropic contributors. Dr. Brinton’s scientific research and STEM education endeavors have been recognized by numerous awards including National Institute on Aging MERIT Award, Scientist of the Year by the Alzheimer’s Drug Development Foundation, Goodes Prize for Excellence in Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery, Ten Best Minds by US News and World Report and the US Presidential Citizens Medal from President Obama.