Leonardo Iaccarino is currently Director in Clinical Development at Avid, Eli Lilly and Company. He has obtained a PhD at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (Italy) and has conducted postgraduate research studies at the University of California San Francisco (USA). His research activities have been focusing on leveraging PET molecular neuroimaging techniques in Alzheimer’s Disease and related disorders to investigate neurodegeneration, protein accumulation and neuroinflammation dynamics.

Costantino Iadecola, M.D. is the Director and Chair of the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute and the Anne Parrish Titzell Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine. His research focuses on the basic mechanisms of neurovascular function and on the cellular and molecular alterations underlying ischemic brain injury, neurodegeneration and other conditions associated with cognitive impairment. A pioneer in establishing the concept of neurovascular unit, Dr. Iadecola has championed the involvement of neurovascular dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases, and the role of innate immunity and the microbiome in ischemic brain injury. He has been involved, as editor or editorial board member, in several journals including J Neurosci, Annals of Neurology, Circulation research, Hypertension and Stroke. Dr. Iadecola has received two Javits Awards from the NIH, the Willis Award-the highest honor in stroke research bestowed by the American Heart Association (AHA), the Zenith Fellow Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, and the Excellence Award in Hypertension Research from the AHA. A member of the Association of American Physicians, he was elected Distinguished Scientist by the AHA and in 2021 received the Basic Research Prize from the AHA. Since 2018 Clarivate Analytics has listed Dr. Iadecola as one of world’s “Highly Cited Researchers” for ranking in the top 1% of the most-cited authors in neuroscience and behavioral science. In 2022, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism.

I have been dedicated to deepening my knowledge of the molecular mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases and examining potential therapeutic approaches to arrest the progression of neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation. My Ph.D. aimed to study novel synthetic neurosteroidal drugs, namely BNN27 and BNN20, in diabetic retinopathy, finding that these molecules specifically target retinal neurons and glial cells, acting as pro-survival and anti-inflammatory agents. My main interests are focused on the compounding neurodegenerative and inflammatory features in neurodegenerative diseases, and the complex interplay between the peripheral immune and central nervous systems that have major implications for Alzheimer’s disease. For the last two years, I have been involved in the study of acute exposure to the World Trade Center (WTC) dust from the WTC attacks on 9/11 and how it correlates with the acceleration of brain aging leading to emerging health conditions in the central nervous system. This study contributed to examining and understanding the impact of WTC dust exposure on the immune cross-talking between the periphery and central nervous system as well as cognitive deterioration promoting AD-type phenotype.

Dr. Ibanez is an Assistant Professor at Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine (WUSM) with a join appointment at the departments of Psychiatry and Neurology. She is also part of the NeuroGenomics and Informatics Center at the same institution. Dr. Ibanez obtained her PhD at the University of Barcelona (Spain) with honors and moved to WUSTL for her postdoctoral training on genome-wide association analyses and other high-throughput techniques. She joined the faculty at WUSM in 2020. Her research interests are focused on understanding the role of RNA species (messenger, small, and circular) in the development, and progression of neurodegenerative diseases and their potential as non-invasive diagnostic techniques.

I am a medical doctor and a researcher in the field of neurology, with a special focus on the role of sleep in the development of neurodegenerative diseases. I currently work at the Sleep Lab of the Medical University of Innsbruck led by Prof. Birgit Högl. I received the designation of "International Sleep Disorders Specialist" from the world sleep society in 2022.

Seiko Ikezu, M.D. Assistant Professor, Associate Consultant I, Department of Neuroscience, Mayo Clinic Florida, Jacksonville ________________________________________ Assistant Professor, Seiko Ikezu, M.D., is Associate Consultant I at the Department of Neuroscience in the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. She graduated from Gunma University School of Medicine in Japan and took a position as research assistant professor at Boston University before moving to Mayo clinic. Dr. Ikezu’s research focuses on the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease and autism spectrum disorders, with special interest in the role of microglia in disease spread and neuronal development. Her main goal is to establish microglia-specific delivery of antisense oligonucleotide or recombinant lentivirus to target disease spread and altered neuronal network caused by microglial phenotypic change during aging or fetal phase. She published her work about the beneficial effect of microglial depletion on suppressing tau propagation in animal model of Alzheimer’s disease and microglial repopulation in behavioral outcome of maternal immune activation mouse model.

Dr. Tsuneya Ikezu is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Director, Molecular NeuroTherapeutics Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. Research in the clinic focuses on neuroimmune cell-mediated regulations of neuronal function, neurogenesis, neuroinflammation, and neurodegeneration. Researchers in Dr. Ikezu’s lab are particularly interested in how the innate immune-related cells, extracellular vehicles (EVs), and molecules in the central nervous system (CNS) influence the pathology and progression of select neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia. He has authored more than 115 journal articles, edited the textbook Neuroimmune Pharmacology (Springer Nature) and served on several editorial boards. Over his career, Dr. Ikezu has received Vada Kinman Oldfield Alzheimer’s Research Award (2000), Inge Grundke Iqbal Award from Alzheimer’s Association (2016) and recently Jack Spivack Excellence in Neuroscience Award (2018). Dr. Ikezu received his M.D. and Ph.D. from University of Tokyo School of Medicine, completed post-doctoral trainings at Massachusetts General Hospital and Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and was Professor of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at University of Nebraska Medical Center prior to joining Boston University (2010-2020) and Mayo Clinic (2021-).

Jennifer started her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at the University of Bath in 2011, during which she undertook a year’s placement at the University of Plymouth investigating the role of mitochondrial dynamics in Parkinson’s disease. Following this she joined the Complex Disease Epigenomics group at the University of Exeter in 2015 to do her PhD under the supervision of Professor Katie Lunnon. During her PhD she characterised the epigenetic changes that occur in iPSC-neuronal and microglial models that have been exposed to Alzheimer’s disease-relevant exposures, such as differentiation and maturation, drug treatment and immune challenge. Since completing her PhD, she has continued in the group as a research fellow and has started a new project looking at the epigenetic changes occurring in dementia with Lewy bodies, Parkinson’s disease and Parkinson’s disease dementia using post-mortem brain samples.

Sandra Invernizzi's main topic of research is the differential effect of Alzheimer's disease and late-life depression on the ability to deal with semantic ambiguity. She's a Ph.D Student in the Departement of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology of the University of Mons, in Belgium. Her Head of departement is Prof. Laurent Lefebvre. You can visit her profil on researchgate : https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sandra-Invernizzi ; you can also read her review about "Late-Life Depression, Cognitive Impairment, and Relationship with Alzheimer’s Disease" in Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders : https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/519453 (ORCID : 0000-0002-1895-2822)

Nunzio Iraci (NI) graduated with a M.Sc in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (2005) and a Ph.D. in Cellular Biology and Physiology (2009), both from the University of Bologna, Italy. NI moved to the Dept. of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge (UK) in 2011 where he contributed to reveal a mechanism of cell-to-cell communication by which neural stem cells may signal with the microenvironment via EVs, in the context of neurodegenerative diseases. He is currently Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at BIOMETEC, University of Catania. His research interests include in-depth characterization of EV-mediated intercellular signalling in the context of neurodegenerative disorders.

Dr. Michael C. Irizarry is Senior Vice-President of Clinical Research and Deputy Chief Clinical Officer at Eisai, responsible for the overall strategy and clinical development of the neurosciences portfolio. He earned undergraduate and medical degrees from Georgetown University and an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed neurology residency and Memory Disorders Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, and continued as Harvard Medical School faculty in the Massachusetts Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. His research encompassed molecular mechanisms, clinical-pathological correlations, animal models, biomarkers, and epidemiology of neurodegenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer’s disease. Prior to joining Eisai in 2018, Dr. Irizarry held a series of leadership positions at Eli Lilly (Vice-President, Early Clinical development, Neurosciences), and GlaxoSmithKline (including acting Vice President for Worldwide Epidemiology).

Dr. Ole Isacson (MD-PhD) is Professor of Neurology (Neuroscience) at Harvard Medical School and the founding director of the Neuroregeneration Research Institute at McLean Hospital (MGB). After completion of his MD-PhD and research at University of Lund, Sweden, and a post-doctoral fellowship at University of Cambridge, UK, Dr Isacson was recruited as faculty to Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, Dept of Neurology, and McLean Hospital to establish an independent laboratory. Prof. Isacson’s laboratory has elucidated biological processes, mechanisms and treatments of neuronal vulnerability in several neurodegenerative diseases. To reverse the effects of brain cell death, his work has pioneered and patented new biotechnologies for restorative treatments using molecular, gene therapy and cell replacement methods, including stem cell derived patient derived neurons. The dual goals of his work are to prevent brain degeneration in PD/AD related pathologies; and repair any irreversible brain damage by micro-restoration of new neurons and glia in the brain. Fundamentally, he and his collaborators have found lysosomal and lipid function to be defective in Parkinson’s disease cells and tissues. New research in his laboratory have shown how to resolve lipid-induced problems in PD and dementia pre-clinical animal models and elucidated the interactions between neurons and glia in lipid pathologies. In addition, he and his team have provided discoveries, models and insights on the nexus of inflammatory reactions and neurodegenerative diseases. Prof. Isacson is Principal Faculty of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, since it was founded in 2005. He served as a member of the Michael J. Fox Foundation Executive Scientific Advisory Board (2014-2016). He has received several international prizes, research awards and lectureships, including The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: The Lindahl Investigator Award, and the Bernard Sanberg Memorial Prize for Brain Repair. Prof. Isacson served as the President of the International Cell Transplant Society (TTS), (2007-2008). In addition to his academic work, he served as a US government federal advisory committee member for the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) (2014-2016) and the CSO of Pfizer’s Neuroscience Division (2016-2017). He is the author or co-author of ~ 400 scientific research articles and 3 books in his field. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience from 2010-2016. Prof. Isacson was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2013.

My name is Kengo Ishiki. I received my Ph.D at Osaka Prefecture University (Osaka, Japan). I work for Sysmex Corporation (Kobe, Japan). My research includes the development of blood-based assays to detect biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease (Aβ, p-tau, tau, etc.).