Explore the Agenda
8:00 am Check In, Coffee & Light Breakfast
8:30 am Chair’s Opening Remarks
Patient-Centric Risk Balancing & Real World Adoption of Anti-Amyloid Therapies
9:00 am Panel Discussion: Genetics-Guided Risk Talks & Real-World Barriers: Driving Smarter Uptake of Disease-Modifying Therapies in Neurodegeneration
- Weighing how genetic risk factors such as APOE-ε4 in Alzheimer’s and LRRK2, GBA, or Parkin variants in Parkinson’s influence both treatment response and side-effect risk to help clinicians and patients make more informed therapy choices
- Examining real-world barriers to uptake of novel disease-modifying therapies across Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, including safety concerns (e.g., ARIA or off-target toxicities), monitoring burden, cost, and modest efficacy to highlight what truly drives or limits prescription and patient acceptance
- Knowing that earlier intervention before symptoms offers the greatest potential benefit, what screening or risk‑scoring approaches could expand pre‑symptomatic use while keeping the risk‑benefit ratio acceptable?
9:30 am NULISA CNS Disease Biomarker Platform – The Only High- Plex, High Sensitivity Platform for Investigation of Biomarkers of Neurodegenerative Diseases & Treatment Response
- NULISA™ combines ultra-sensitive femtogram level detection with barcode-based high-plex biomarker analysis.
- The NULISA CNS Disease Panel is unique in enabling investigation of hundreds of proteins involved in neuroinflammation, vascular, and synaptic dysfunction, and proteinopathies
- NULISA enables the unique ability to translate discoveries based on broad profiling into single and low-plex biomarker assays on the same instrumentation
- NULISA single-, low-, and high-plex assays all run fully automated on the ARGO HT System
- NULISA CNS Disease Panel 120 and Inflammation Panel 250 support exploratory clinical research into therapeutic effects on neurodegenerative disease processes
- NULISA IVD and ARGO DX in development with funding from Gates Ventures and DxA
10:00 am Reframing Progress: How Infusion Burden, Digital Tools & Lived Priorities Can Redefine Success in Parkinson’s Treatment
- Day to day impact of infusion schedules
- Attitudes toward digital wearables for symptom tracking
- Outcomes that matter most to patients vs. clinician reported scales
10:30 am Morning Break & Refreshments
Track One: Discovery & Preclinical
Chair: Alessandra Welker, Principal Research Scientist I, AbbVie
Expanding Therapeutic Frontiers in AD & PD: Blocking Protein Spread & Unlocking Inflammasome Modulation Beyond Amyloid & α-Synuclein
11:00 am Drugs in Preclinical Development: Targeting Pathological Spreading of Alpha-Synuclein, Beta-Amyloid & Tau
- Molecular mechanisms responsible for prion-like propagation and spreading of misfolded protein aggregates / amyloid proteopathic seeds
- Olfactory bulb injections of alpha-synuclein Preformed Fibrils (PFFs) reproduce slow brain wide spread of alphasynucleinopathy in rodents, mirroring PD
- Preclinical development of a novel Alpha-Synuclein/Beta- Amyloid/Tau/ /glycosaminoglycan inhibitor for PD and AD
11:30 am Advancing Inflammasome-Targeted Therapeutics: A Novel Pathway Beyond Amyloid & Alpha-Synuclein
- Leveraging decades of safety data from nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor analogues to accelerate development and reduce risk in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and MS
- Demonstrating compelling real-world and preclinical evidence showing up to 75% reduced incidence of neurodegenerative disease and robust efficacy in gold-standard models
- Positioning inflammasome modulation as a broad, diseaseagnostic strategy with potential to transform treatment timelines and bypass limitations of single-pathway targets
12:00 pm Extended Q&A
Track Two: Clinical & Regulatory
Chair: Bruce Morimoto, Head, Drug Development, Fuku Biotech
Advancing Precision Endpoints in Neurodegeneration: Co-Developing Imaging Companion Diagnostics & Harnessing Digital Wearables for More Inclusive AD/PD Trials
11:00 am Companion Diagnostic Co-Development for New Imaging Brain Scans or as Outcome Measures
- How can sponsors and tracer makers team up (for example, the widely used but still investigational Lantheus tau tracer) to collect validation data side-by-side with regulatory approval in mind for patient pre-selection
- How co-developing can enable the label to specify a clear uptake cut-off instead of treating “everyone”
- Use of Hippocampal volume as eligibility criterion and as an outcome measure in APOE-4 carriers with AD
- Partnering early avoids the hold-up when the diagnostic lags behind, allowing doctors to use the scan on launch day to pick the right patients
11:30 am Roundtable Discussion: Using Real-World Dopamine Add-On Templates to Illuminate Regulatory Paths for Combination Labels & Unlock More Effective Multi- Mechanism Therapies
- Have the modest effect sizes of stand‑alone antibodies accelerated the field’s appetite for multi‑mechanism therapeutic strategies?
- What specific regulatory hurdles must be overcome to secure combination labelling and achieve smoother NDA reviews
- Add-on dopamine replacement examples from early PD studies illustrate feasibility – how can these real-world templates be used as ready-made protocol blueprints?
12:30 pm Lunch & Networking Break
Track One: Discovery & Preclinical
Chair: Alessandra Welker, Principal Research Scientist I, AbbVie
Harnessing AI & Cellular Pathways: Advancing Novel Target Discovery & Restoring Autophagy-Lysosomal Function in Neurodegeneration
1:30 pm Restoring the Autophagy–Lysosomal Pathway Through Endolysosomal Ion Channels To treat Age-Related Neurodegeneration
2:00 pm AI / Advanced Computing for New Target Discovery for AD/PD or Protein Aggregation Disorders in CNS
- Exploring the development of novel CRISPR-based screening approaches to identify new targets
- Highlighting the need to improve the disease modelling systems to better reflect the progression of the disease, and improve upon the current models which are limited in their ability to capture the full complexity of the pathological processes
2:30 pm Extended Q&A
Track Two: Clinical & Regulatory
Chair: Bruce Morimoto, Head, Drug Development, Fuku Biotech
Advancing Precision Endpoints in Neurodegeneration: Co-Developing Imaging Companion Diagnostics & Harnessing Digital Wearables for More Inclusive AD/PD Trials
1:30 pm Translatable Synaptic & Lipid Biomarkers for Early Parkinson’s: Insights from Longitudinal Multi-Modal Signatures
- Identifying novel plasma lipid and synaptic protein biomarkers that change longitudinally in early Parkinson’s, enabling earlier detection and patient stratification
- Correlating these biomarkers with clinical progression and functional decline to enhance predictive power in trial endpoints
- Enabling tighter selection and more efficient monitoring in clinical trials, reducing sample sizes and improving sensitivity to detect disease-modifying effects
2:00 pm Roundtable Discussion: Digital Wearable Sensors to Provide Continuous, Objective Motor Data & Unlock Faster, Leaner Parkinson’s Trials as Primary Endpoints
- Capturing wrist worn and smartphone sensor streams that continuously log tremor, bradykinesia, and gait, supplying objective high frequency data that can shrink sample sizes and sharpen signal detection
- Highlighting the first regulated Parkinson’s study to use a digital movement biomarker as its primary outcome, setting a clear regulatory precedent that boosts sponsor confidence to adopt wearables in future trials
3:00 pm Afternoon Break & Refreshments
Beyond the Science: Translating Novel Mechanisms Into Real-World Value & Investment Confidence
3:30 pm Beyond Amyloid: Small Molecule Inflammasome Modulators
- Showing that inflammasome modulating small molecule reverses memory loss even with amyloid still present, opening a non amyloid treatment path and diversifying therapeutic risk after 30 years of single target focus
- Leveraging blood biomarkers like p Tau217 to provide objective read outs of anti inflammatory efficacy, enabling faster, smaller proof of concept studies
- Delivering orally bioavailable small molecules that bypass blood-brain barrier hurdles faced by antibodies, simplifying dosing and improving long term patient adherence
4:00 pm Market Access Reality Check for Disease Modifying AD Drugs
- CMS coverage gap for pre clinical anti amyloids and spill over to private payers
- Cost drivers: MRI monitoring, infusion logistics and diagnostic bundling
- Generating evidence packages that HTA bodies prioritise (QoL, caregiver, budget impact) with responsible data storytelling to maintain policymaker trust
4:30 pm Panel Discussion: Bridging Innovation & Investment: De-Risking Disease-Modifying Neurodegenerative Therapies to Secure Investor Backing
- How important is it to present rigorously validated biology and clear platform expansion potential, rather than a single asset story, when seeking investment in disease modifying Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s therapies?
- Is a biomarker driven proof of concept within roughly 24 months now viewed as the standard benchmark for funding decisions in neurodegenerative drug development?
- To what extent does a pipeline that hedges risk through multiple mechanisms, such as combining blood–brain barrier shuttle antibodies with gene or small molecule therapies, shape investment appetite in this space?