# Valerie Daggett

> Valerie Daggett is a University of Washington bioengineering professor turned biotech founder who spent three decades running the world's largest collection of protein-folding simulations, stumbled onto a structure nature was not supposed to make, and built a company around it. As founder and CEO of Seattle-based AltPep, she is commercializing the alpha-sheet: a strange protein geometry her lab predicted on a computer before anyone confirmed it in a test tube. Her SOBA-AD blood test, which spots toxic amyloid oligomers years before symptoms, earned FDA Breakthrough Device Designation and put her at the front of the race to catch Alzheimer's early.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at AltPep; David and Nancy Auth Endowed Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington
- **Organizations:** AltPep Corporation, University of Washington
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.A., Reed College, Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry (advisors Irwin Kuntz and Peter Kollman), University of California, San Francisco, Postdoctoral Fellow with Michael Levitt (2013 Nobel laureate in Chemistry), Stanford University
- **Known for:** Discovered the alpha-sheet protein structure, a rare conformation linked to toxic amyloid oligomers, Built Dynameomics, the world's largest collection of protein-folding simulations covering ~95% of known protein folds (hundreds of terabytes), Founder and CEO of AltPep, which has raised tens of millions to commercialize amyloid diagnostics and therapeutics

## Career timeline

- **1983** — Earned B.A. from Reed College
- **1990** — Completed Ph.D. at UC San Francisco; thesis on molecular modelling of peptides and proteins
- **1990-1993** — Postdoctoral fellow at Stanford with Michael Levitt
- **2005** — Daggett lab awarded a U.S. Department of Energy supercomputing grant for the Dynameomics project
- **2006** — DOE grant renewed for nearly 2 million processor-hours
- **2011** — Named Fellow of the Biophysical Society
- **2015** — Elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
- **2021** — Became founder and CEO of AltPep, a spinout from her UW lab
- **2022** — Published SOBA blood-test results showing detection of toxic oligomers before cognitive symptoms
- **2023** — Won GeekWire Health Innovation of the Year; SOBA-AD highlighted by NIH
- **2024** — Elected to Washington State Academy of Sciences; received University Faculty Lecture Award; SOBA-AD validated in two cohorts in Scientific Reports

## Achievements

- Discovered the alpha-sheet protein structure, a rare conformation linked to toxic amyloid oligomers
- Built Dynameomics, the world's largest collection of protein-folding simulations covering ~95% of known protein folds (hundreds of terabytes)
- Founder and CEO of AltPep, which has raised tens of millions to commercialize amyloid diagnostics and therapeutics
- Developed the SOBA-AD blood test, granted FDA Breakthrough Device Designation
- Author of 275+ scientific publications and multiple patents
- Elected Fellow of AIMBE, the Biophysical Society, and the Washington State Academy of Sciences
- Holds the Lise Meitner Visiting Professorship at Lund University
- Senior Editor of Protein Engineering, Design and Selection
- 2023 GeekWire Health Innovation of the Year

## Latest updates

- **2024-03** — SOBA-AD blood test validated across two independent cohorts, published in Scientific Reports
- **2024** — Elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences and received UW's University Faculty Lecture Award

## Links

- Website: https://altpep.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/valerie-daggett-83690b98
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/altpepcorp

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/valerie-daggett
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-04