Dr. Zago has served as Prothena’s Chief Scientific Officer since 2017. He joined Prothena in 2012 when the company was founded, serving as Vice President, Head of Research and Head of Pharmacology. Dr. Zago was also Principal Scientist at Elan Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy.

Henrik Zetterberg is a Professor of Neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and University College London, UK, and a Clinical Chemist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. He is Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, leads the UK DRI Fluid Biomarker Laboratory at UCL and is a Key Member of the Hong Kong Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases. His main research focus and clinical interest are fluid biomarkers for brain diseases, neurodegenerative disease in particular.

Meng Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in the 100plus Study and in the Delft Bioinformatics Lab at Technical University Delft. He is investigating the role of age behind Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) from neuropathology, proteomics, epigenetics, and genetics levels. Cooperating with the 100plus Study, he can get access to a large and novel centenarians’ dataset and a group of knowledgable and passionate people. This study “BRAIN PROTEOMICS OF COGNITIVELY HEALTHY CENTENARIANS IN THE CONTEXT AGING AND ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE” is aiming to identify molecular mechanisms that confer resilience or resistance to age- or disease-related cognitive decline. Therefore, he compared the proteome of brain tissues from centenarians with non-demented (ND) individuals and AD patients covering an age-continuum of 50-95 years. He identified 13 proteins differentially regulated in centenarians compared to AD cases at Braak stage IV, which may point to mechanisms involved in resilience against the presence of tangles, and 97 differentially regulated aging proteins point towards key mechanisms in brain aging.

Dr. Shijun Zhang is currently a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and the Graduate Program Director in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). Dr. Zhang also serve as the Board Member of Alzheimer’s Associate Greater Richmond Chapter. He received his BS in Pharmacy and MS in Medicinal Chemistry in 1993 and 1996 from Shandong Medical University, respectively. In 2000, he moved to the United States and received his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences from Wayne State University in 2004. After his postdoctoral training at the University of Minnesota with Professor Portoghese, he joined the School of Pharmacy, VCU as a faculty where he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure and to Professor. The research in Dr. Zhang’s group is focused on rational small molecule design for neurodegenerative diseases and inflammatory disease, particularly focusing on Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and traumatic brain injury. Another area that his research group has actively engaged is the design of chemical probes into understanding the dysfunctions of inflammasomes and mitochondria in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Liqin Zhao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Kansas. The lab’s ongoing research focuses primarily on identifying how sugars are dysregulated in the pathogenesis of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (sAD). We are particularly interested in understanding how the utilization of sugars in the brain is affected by sAD-linked genetic and environmental factors, leading to the development of risk phenotypes for sAD.

Berislav Zlokovic, MD, PhD is the director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology & Neuroscience at the Keck School of Medicine, and Professor of Biology at Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Zlokovic studies the role of brain microcirculation, particularly the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in health and disease in the adult brain and during aging. Using animal models and studying human brain he has pioneered the neurovascular concept of Alzheimer’s disease, and showed that BBB breakdown can accumulate before neuronal and synaptic loss, and is an early biomarker of human cognitive dysfunction. He demonstrated that disrupted cross-talk between BBB-associated pericytes and brain capillary endothelial cells, and astrocytes and pericytes, within the neurovascular unit leads to neuronal dysfunction and loss, and that targeting these BBB pathways can reverse neurodegenerative process. He has identified genes and receptors at the BBB regulating levels of Alzheimer’s amyloid-beta toxin in the brain, which accumulates with aging and dementia. He has developed new techniques for studying neurovascular functions in animal models and the living human brain that have opened up new areas of research previously untouched. His findings contributed to Phase 2/3 trials for Alzheimer’s disease based on clearance, and stroke based on activated protein C pathway in the brain. Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics listed Zlokovic as one of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” for ranking in top one percent of the most-cited authors in the field of neurosciences and behavioral sciences for 18 consecutive years (2002-2020). He received the MetLife Award for Medical Research, the Potamkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology, the MERIT Award from NIA, the Javits Award from NINDS, and recently the 2019 USC Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship, “the highest honor the university faculty bestows on its members for distinguished intellectual achievements”. Zlokovic is a member of the AAAS and the European Academy of Sciences. He co-founded ZZ Biotech, a biotechnology company dedicated to developing new treatments for stroke and other CNS disorders.

Researcher and group leader in the field of translational neurosciences.