2018 Fall Symposium: Biomarkers to Accelerate Drug Development for Alzheimer’s Disease
Friday, November 2, 2018
10:30 am
The 2018 Fall Symposium features a panel of entrepreneurs and academics, who are developing some of the most innovative treatments in clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease. The Symposium is part of our annual Fall Luncheon.
MODERATOR
Howard Fillit, MD, is an internationally recognized geriatrician, neuroscientist, and expert in Alzheimer's disease. He is the Founding Executive Director and Chief Science Officer of the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation. Dr. Fillit has had a distinguished academic medicine career and is currently a clinical professor of geriatric medicine and palliative care, medicine and neurosciences at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is also a physician at The Rockefeller University Hospital. Throughout his career, Dr. Fillit has maintained a limited private practice in consultative geriatric medicine with a focus on Alzheimer's disease.
Dr. Fillit has received numerous awards, including the Alzheimer's Association's Rita Hayworth Award. He is a fellow of the American Geriatrics Society, the American College of Physicians, the Gerontological Society of America, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 scientific articles, abstracts and books, including the Brocklehurst’s Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology.
PANELISTS
Richard S. Isaacson, PhD serves as Director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic, Weill Cornell Memory Disorders Program, Associate Professor of Neurology, Assistant Dean of Faculty Development and Director of the Neurology Residency Training Program at Weill Cornell Medical College/New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He previously served as Associate Professor of Clinical Neurology, Vice Chair of Education, and Education Director of the McKnight Brain Institute in the Department of Neurology at the University of Miami (UM) Miller School of Medicine. He completed his residency in Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, and his medical internship at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, FL. Prior to joining UM, he served as Associate Medical Director of the Wien Center for Alzheimer's disease and Memory Disorders at Mount Sinai in Miami Beach, Florida.
A graduate of the accelerated 6-year BA/MD program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, Dr. Isaacson specializes in Alzheimer's disease risk reduction and treatment, mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's, and pre-clinical Alzheimer's. His research focuses on the implementation and longitudinal assessment of clinical precision medicine interventions for Alzheimer's management. Dr. Isaacson has a family history of Alzheimer's disease and passionately believes in a comprehensive, evidence-based, multi-modal approach toward both treatment and prevention. His recent efforts have focused on the development of Alzheimer's Universe (www.AlzU.org) a vast online educational portal on Alzheimer's disease for the public, healthcare providers, as well as high school, college, and medical students.
Note: In an ADDF funded study, Dr. Isaacson collaborated with ADDF's CognitiveVitality.org program to build and test web-based brain health lessons in two randomized controlled trials—one for the lay public and another for healthcare professionals.
Michelle M. Mielke, PhD received a BS in Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh and a doctorate in Neuroepidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Health Sciences Research, Division of Epidemiology, and a Professor in the Department of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Mielke works as a translational epidemiologist to further understanding of the etiology and epidemiology of neurodegenerative diseases. A primary focus of her research is the identification of fluid biomarkers for the diagnosis, prediction, and progression of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. Another focus of Dr. Mielke's research is on understanding the sex and gender differences in the development and progression of neurodegenerative diseases. She leads the Mayo Clinic Specialized Center of Research Excellence on Sex Differences, with a specific focus on abrupt endocrine disruption, accelerated aging, and Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Mielke is the Chair of the Biofluid-Based Biomarker Professional Interest Area under the Alzheimer's Association, Co-Chair of the Society of Women's Health Alzheimer's Disease Network, a member of the Food and Drug Administration Peripheral and Central Nervous System Advisory Committee, and Associate Editor of Alzheimer's and Dementia. She is the Principal Investigator of several NIH- and Foundation-funded clinical- and epidemiological-based grants. She has published over 190 manuscripts and has presented at multiple national and international conferences and consortiums.
Note: Dr. Mielke was funded by ADDF in 2015 through Mayo Clinic Rochester for a project titled "Plasma Lipidomic and Alpha-Synuclein Comparison of Individuals with Alpha-Synuclein, Amyloid, or Normal Pathology." This was important support for their research projects focused on developing biomarkers for dementia with Lewy bodies.
Mark A. Mintun, MD assumed the role of Vice-President of Pain and Neurodegeneration at Eli Lilly & Co in 2018. Dr. Mintun joined Lilly by way of Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly & Co., when he became Chief Medical Officer at Avid in 2010 and then its President in 2014. In these roles he has led the clinical development programs for imaging amyloid and tau pathology of Alzheimer's disease. Prior to Avid, Dr. Mintun was Professor and Vice-Chair of Radiology at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine, with joint appointments in Psychiatry, Neurology, Bioengineering, and the Anatomy and Neurobiology Departments. He earned a BS in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977, received his medical degree in 1981 at Washington University School of Medicine, and completed a research fellowship in neurology and residency training in nuclear medicine. Dr. Mintun is an adjunct Professor of Radiology at University of Pennsylvania Medicine School. Dr. Mintun has co-authored over 200 research publications that include reports of brain imaging to characterize flow/metabolism relationships, neurotransmitter systems, circuitry for processing affective stimuli and the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases.
Note: Though ADDF has not funded Dr. Minton directly, Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, which developed Florbetapir (aka Amyvid), is the first FDA approved diagnostic for Alzheimer's disease. The development of this agent was seed funded by ADDF.