neurodegenerative-disease
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Russ Lebovitz
Russ Lebovitz is the co-founder and CEO of Amprion, a precision brain diagnostics company that built the first commercial seed amplification assay for detecting misfolded alpha-synuclein - the protein at the root of Parkinson's disease and other synucleinopathies. An MD/PhD trained at Washington University in St. Louis and a former research physician at Baylor and Fox Chase Cancer Center, Lebovitz spent years chasing prions after the mad cow scare, then pivoted the same detection science toward common neurodegenerative diseases. His SYNTap test won an FDA Breakthrough Device Designation and is now used in clinical trials and patient care to spot brain disease years before symptoms appear.
Cognito Therapeutics, Inc.
Cognito Therapeutics is a Cambridge, Massachusetts clinical-stage neurotechnology company spun out of MIT that develops non-invasive, wearable therapy for neurodegenerative disease. Its lead product, Spectris, delivers precise gamma-frequency light and sound stimulation through connected glasses and headphones to evoke gamma brain oscillations, with the goal of slowing cognitive and functional decline in Alzheimer's disease. Spectris AD holds FDA Breakthrough Device Designation and is being evaluated in the HOPE Study, described as the largest medical device trial focused solely on Alzheimer's disease.
PAQ Therapeutics
PAQ Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company in Burlington, Massachusetts developing a new class of small-molecule degraders that harness autophagy, the body's natural cellular recycling system, to destroy disease-causing proteins. Its proprietary ATTEC (autophagosome-tethering compound) platform aims to eliminate targets that traditional inhibitors cannot reach. The company's lead programs are KRAS degraders - PT0253, a selective KRAS G12D degrader, and PT0511, a pan-KRAS degrader - both in Phase 1 clinical trials for lung, colorectal and pancreatic cancers driven by KRAS mutations.
Amprion
Amprion is a precision-diagnostics company using Seed Amplification Assay (SAA) technology to detect misfolded proteins - alpha-synuclein, amyloid-beta and tau - in cerebrospinal fluid, giving physicians and drug developers a biological readout of neurodegenerative disease years before symptoms fully emerge. Its flagship SAAmplify-aSYN test (formerly SYNTap) is the first commercially available validated alpha-synuclein SAA, carries an FDA Breakthrough Device Designation, and aims to replace symptom-based guesswork for Parkinson's, Lewy body dementia, Alzheimer's and multiple system atrophy with autopsy-grade certainty.
Stan Abel
Stan Abel is President and CEO of ProJenX, a clinical-stage biotech spun out of Columbia University research and Project ALS, racing to get its lead drug prosetin - an oral MAP4K inhibitor - into ALS patients after two decades of laboratory work and a $15 million Series A.
Stewart Campbell
A. Stewart Campbell, PhD, is the CEO of Vertero Therapeutics, the Woburn, Massachusetts biotech formerly known as Axial Therapeutics. A medicinal chemist by training with more than 30 years in drug discovery, he runs a company built on an unusual bet: that the road to treating Parkinson's disease starts in the gut, not the brain. Campbell joined in 2017, took the top job in February 2021, engineered the 2025 rebrand from Axial to Vertero, and is steering the lead candidate VT-5006, a gut-selective small molecule, into its first clinical trials. He is a co-inventor on more than 20 patent families, including the foundational patents behind the approved graft-versus-host disease drug Rezurock.
JuneBrain Inc.
JuneBrain Inc. is a Baltimore medtech startup building a wearable, AI-powered eye-scanning system that brings optical coherence tomography (OCT) out of the eye clinic and into neurology, primary care, and the home. Its flagship Neuro-i SS-OCT captures high-resolution retinal images without a technician, and its AI software turns those images into quantitative biomarkers clinicians can use to monitor diseases like multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's between visits. Founded in 2017 by neuroscientist Samantha Scott after her own diagnosis with a neuromuscular disorder, the company is a WBENC-certified women-owned business on track for FDA submission in 2026.
Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc.
Sangamo Therapeutics is a clinical-stage genomic medicine company in Brisbane, California that engineers zinc finger proteins to switch genes on, off, or rewrite them. After three decades pioneering zinc finger technology, it is racing to bring its lead gene therapy ST-920 for Fabry disease to market while building a neurology pipeline aimed at crossing the blood-brain barrier - all under the pressure of a 2026 search for strategic alternatives.
Alice Zhang
Alice Zhang is the CEO and co-founder of Verge Genomics (now Verge Labs), a San Francisco biotech she started in 2015 after walking away from an MD/PhD program at UCLA. She built a company that pairs machine learning with one of the largest collections of human brain tissue to find drug targets for diseases like ALS, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. A Princeton molecular biology graduate, Soros Fellow and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Zhang turned her inexperience into what she calls a 'superpower,' raising more than $130 million and partnering with Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca before pivoting the company toward selling its data and insights to pharma in 2025.
Andy Hu
Andy Hu is a physician-turned-dealmaker who serves as Chief Business Officer of Augustine Therapeutics, a Leuven and Cambridge biotech advancing next-generation selective HDAC6 inhibitors for neuromuscular, neurodegenerative, and cardio-metabolic diseases. He joined permanently in April 2025 after a stint as advisor, fresh off serving as CBO of Arkuda Therapeutics through its acquisition by Johnson & Johnson. Trained as an MD at Baylor with an MBA from Rice and an undergraduate degree from Harvard, Hu has built a career steering life sciences companies through IPOs, partnerships, and acquisitions - from Dimension Therapeutics to Ultragenyx, plus stints in investment banking at Leerink Partners and consulting at Strategic Decisions Group.
Megan McGill
Megan McGill, M.D., Ph.D., is the chief executive officer and a board member of Brenig Therapeutics, a clinical-stage neuroscience biotech using an AI-based discovery platform to build small-molecule treatments for neurodegenerative disease. She took the role on October 30, 2025, to steer Brenig's lead Parkinson's program, the LRRK2 inhibitor BT-267, through early human trials. Trained in MRI physics and neuroimaging at NYU and in radiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering, she traded the reading room for the boardroom, building a decade-long run that spans McKinsey consulting, business development at BridgeBio and Regenxbio, and the CEO seat at Epitor, Regel, and HitchBio.
Benjamine Liu
Benjamine Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Formation Bio, an AI-native pharmaceutical company in New York that licenses and develops its own drug pipeline. A Rhodes Scholar with a DPhil from Oxford, he started the company (originally TrialSpark) in 2016 after concluding during his graduate work that clinical trials, not discovery, were the real bottleneck slowing new treatments from reaching patients. Formation Bio has raised over $610 million, including a $372 million Series D led by a16z with backing from Sanofi.
Eric Green
Eric Green is the Founder and CEO of Trace Neuroscience, a South San Francisco biotech company racing to develop the first effective ASO therapy for ALS. A Harvard-and-Stanford-trained physician-scientist with a background in cardiology, Green co-founded iLab Solutions (acquired by Agilent), Respira Design (Stanford $50K Challenge winner), and Maze Therapeutics before launching Trace with a $101 million Series A in November 2024. Trace's lead program targets UNC13A - a protein lost in ALS patients - using an antisense oligonucleotide designed to restore healthy nerve-muscle communication. With clinical trials targeting early 2026, Green is betting human genetics can do for ALS what it did for heart failure.