Precision Therapeutics
for Brain Diseases

Dr. Brannan is the former Chief Medical Officer at Karuna Therapeutics and a neuroscience drug development expert who has held senior positions overseeing both clinical development and medical affairs with more than 15 years of industry experience.  Dr. Brannan has been active in the development of multiple important central nervous system treatments, with experience across drug development, registration, medical affairs, launch, and lifecycle management in the areas of anxiety, depression, epilepsy, neuropathic pain, schizophrenia, migraine, cognition, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. He has authored over 50 publications and routinely gives invited talks and presentations at industry conferences.

Brett Clementz, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Georgia and the Director of UGA’s BioImaging Research Center. He has been continuously funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) since 1991, and his research programs translate clinical neuroscience knowledge into treatment targets for people with serious psychiatric conditions.

John Harrison, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Alzheimer Center Amsterdam, Visiting Professor at King’s College London, Chief Scientific Officer at Scottish Brain Sciences, and an acknowledged cognition expert whose principal professional interest is in helping people understand, maintain, and enhance their cognitive skills. In the past 25 years, John has assisted more than 80 CNS drug development organizations with the selection and successful integration of cognitive testing into therapeutic development programs.

Philip D. Harvey, Ph.D., is a Leonard M. Miller Professor of Psychiatry, Vice Chair for Research, and Director of the Division of Psychology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He is also a Senior Health Research Scientist at the Bruce W. Carter VA Medical Center in Miami, FL. Dr. Harvey has authored over 1,000 scientific papers and abstracts and written over 70 book chapters. His research has focused on cognition and everyday functioning, in healthy aging, schizophrenia, and other serious mental illnesses.

Dana C. Hilt, M.D., is the Chief Medical Officer at Actinogen Therapeutics and has more than 25 years of drug development experience, primarily in CNS drugs. He has been involved in the development of drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), multiple sclerosis (MS), schizophrenia, and other non-CNS conditions.

Richard Keefe, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neurosciences at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Dr. Keefe’s research is primarily devoted to understanding cognitive dysfunction and its treatment in patients with schizophrenia and other psychiatric and neurological conditions. He has had a leadership role for cognitive methods in several large NIMH studies and over 100 industry trials and has published more than 300 scientific papers.

Thomas Laughren, M.D., is the Director of Regulatory Affairs for Massachusetts General Hospital Clinical Trials Network and Institute (CTNI). He retired as Director of the Division of Psychiatry Products, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at FDA in December of 2012, where he oversaw the review of all psychiatric drug development activities conducted under INDs, the review of all NDAs, and supplements for new psychiatric drug claims. He has authored and co-authored many papers and book chapters on regulatory and methodological issues pertaining to the development of psychiatric drugs.

Dr. Nicholson currently serves on the board of directors at Volastra, Adverum, Actinium, and Wild Bioscience, and is an operational partner at Gilde Healthcare. He most recently served as executive vice president and chief research and development officer of Allergan, prior to its acquisition by AbbVie in May 2020, and has over thirty years of strategic business and R&D leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry across a wide range of therapeutic areas.

Robert Schwarcz, Ph.D., is a Scientific Co-founder of Kynexis and Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Pediatrics at the University of Maryland Baltimore. Continuously funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health for more than 40 years, his laboratory pioneered the study of the kynurenine pathway in the brain, leading to the realization that it plays a substantive role in cognition and in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Based on these insights, he co-founded Kynexis to develop fundamentally new interventions for the prevention and treatment of brain dysfunctions in humans.

Carol Tamminga, M.D., is a Scientific Co-founder and Chair of the SAB at Kynexis and the Department of Psychiatry Chair and Chief of Translational Research in Psychosisat UT Southwestern. She is a leading psychiatrist and neuroscientist known for her groundbreaking translational research in the field of psychosis, which has led to major insights into the mechanisms underlying schizophrenia and its associated genetics and biomarkers.