Creating Disruptive Therapies

Dr. Robert Hauser is a Professor of Neurology at the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa, Florida. He serves as Director of the USF Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center, a Parkinson Foundation Center of Excellence. Dr. Hauser earned a medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and completed neurology training at the Eastern Virginia Graduate School of Medicine, in Norfolk, Virginia.

Dr. Hauser completed a fellowship in Movement Disorders at the University of South Florida and became Center Director in 1994. Dr. Hauser has authored or co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and is one of the world’s most cited Parkinson’s Disease investigators. He is Past Chairman of the Interventional Neurology Section of the American Academy of Neurology, has served on the executive committee of the Parkinson Study Group, and was a member of the steering committee for the NIH-sponsored Neuroprotective Exploratory Trials in Parkinson’s Disease program (NET-PD). Dr. Hauser lectures frequently at scientific meetings and served as Chairman of the 2009 World Federation of Neurology International Congress on Parkinson’s Disease and Related Disorders.

He has extensive expertise in clinical trial design and execution. The outcome measures that he developed have become the gold standard for use in clinical trials. He maintains an active patient practice and has been voted a Top Doctor by his peers every year since 1993. His primary research interest is the development of new medical and surgical treatments for Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders.

He is an international authority in the area of movement disorders, which special expertise in experimental therapeutics and pathogenesis in movement disorders. Dr. Kordower has been ranked 29th in Parkinson’s disease expertise worldwide. He has performed numerous gene and cell therapy preclinical studies that have been translated into clinical trials. He has published landmark papers in the area of cell replacement strategies, including the first demonstration that fetal dopaminergic grafts can survive, innervate, and form synapses in patients with Parkinson’s disease (NEJM). Furthermore, he demonstrated that long-term grafts in such patients can form Lewy bodies (Nature Medicine). He has co-authored a paper in Nature demonstrating that human dopaminergic stem cells can survive and function in parkinsonian mice, rats, and monkeys. With regard to gene therapy, he published the lead article in Science demonstrating that gene delivery GDNF can prevent the emergence of motor symptoms and prevents nigrostriatal degeneration in nonhuman primate models of Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Kordower was also the first to demonstrate that gene delivery of CNTF can obviate neurodegenerative processes in a nonhuman primate model of Huntington’s disease. Dr. Kordower has published more than 350 manuscripts and chapters, 14 of which are citation classics. He has lectured all over the world and has served on more than 20 journal editorial boards (Sections Head and Associate Editor on two, including Movement Disorders). He has also served on the program committee for the World Parkinson’s Congress, is a Past-President of ASNTR, and is both a founding SAB member and two-time Executive Committee member of The Michael J. Fox Foundation. Dr. Kordower received his Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy from the City University of New York (CUNY). He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from CUNY in 2004.

Kenneth Marek is President and senior scientist at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders. Dr. Marek’s major research interests include the identification of biomarkers for early detection, assessment of disease progression, and development of new treatments for Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative disorders. His specific interest has been in in vivo neuroreceptor imaging biomarkers. He has authored numerous neurology and neuroscience publications on these topics. Dr. Marek is the principal investigator of several ongoing multi-center international studies, including the Parkinson’s Progression Marker Initiative (PPMI), the Parkinson Associated Risk Syndrome (PARS) study, and Pathways to Prevention (P2P). Dr. Marek serves on the scientific advisory board of The Michael J. Fox Foundation and is a special advisor to the foundation. He also was a co-founder of Molecular NeuroImaging, LLC, a company providing discovery and clinical neuroimaging research services. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Princeton University and a Doctor of Medicine from Yale University.

Karl Kieburtz MD MPH is a neurologist and clinical researcher. After an undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Amherst College, he completed MD and MPH degrees, and neurology residency, at the University of Rochester. He was the initial Robert J Joynt Professor in the Department of Neurology, and is currently Professor of Neurology, at the University of Rochester. He was the founding Director of the Center of Health & Technology (CHET), and served as the Director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research at the University of Rochester. Dr Kieburtz was the past Chair of the Parkinson Study Group Executive Committee, and a past member of the Huntington Study Group Executive Committee. He has been global Principal Investigator for more than 50 multi-center and multi-national NIH, industry, and Foundation sponsored clinical trials, including the large NIH-sponsored multi-center NET-PD study. He was elected as a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences in 2014. He co-founded Clintrex Research Corporation in 2008, providing scientific and regulatory advisory services to companies developing CNS therapies. He serves on the scientific advisory boards of biotech and pharma companies, as well as for emerging therapeutic and data technology companies.

Associate Professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic Rochester and Director of the Autonomic Laboratories with interests in autonomic disorders and diseases caused by abnormal synuclein proteins.

Head of the Department of Neurology for Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University Hospital Bordeaux, Co-Chair of the French Reference Center for Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) and Deputy Director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University Bordeaux.