Robert joined Nine Square Therapeutics as CEO in January 2022. Before coming to Nine Square, he served as chief medical officer of Alector, a biotechnology company pioneering novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases by targeting immune dysfunction as a root cause of multiple pathologies that drive degenerative brain disorders. Robert joined Alector from Genentech, where between 2009 and 2016 he held various leadership roles in the company’s Medical and Neuroscience Clinical Development organizations. Prior to joining Genentech, he spent several years as a neurologist at the University of Munich and also was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group.

Robert is a board-certified neurologist in Germany and holds an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München.

As head of Chemistry, Chemistry at Nine Square Therapeutics, Mark is responsible for medicinal and computational chemistry, DMPK, screening, and other drug discovery activities. Prior to joining Nine Square in 2021, he held leadership roles in both big pharma and small companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Akebia Therapeutics, Verge Genomics, and Regulus Therapeutics. Mark was also co-founder of Aetheria Therapeutics, a J&J spin-out company.

Mark earned his B.S. from the University of California, San Diego, and completed his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. He has served as an elected member of the American Chemical Society, San Diego Executive Board, the Susan G. Komen grant review board, and as a graduate student advisor for the UCSD Academia/Industry advisory program.

As head of Biology, Tina is responsible for overseeing assay development, functional compound validation, disease model development and testing, as well as the establishment of the company’s cell profiling platform. Before joining Nine Square in 2021, she worked at Alector, first as a founding scientist, later as leader of the team that discovered three novel first-in-class antibody therapeutics targeting innate immune cells in the brain.

Tina received her Ph.D. from the University of Hohenheim for work performed at Rockefeller University in New York and she performed her postdoctoral work at Stanford University.

CK brings to Nine Square extensive experience in developing and applying state-of-the-art computational chemistry methods to lead-identification, lead-optimization, ADME property prediction, cryptic binding site detection, enzyme function prediction and protein structure modeling. He has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Prior to joining Nine Square in 2021, CK worked as a professional researcher at the Pharmaceutical Chemistry department of University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in Matt Jacobson's lab.

CK received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK) and performed post-doctoral research in Cambridge University, University College London, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and UCSF.

Charlie plays a key role in setting and implementing medicinal chemistry strategies at Nine Square. His major responsibilities include small molecule hit generation, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization activities, and overall prosecution of Nine Square medicinal chemistry campaigns. Prior to joining Nine Square, Charlie worked in both small biotech and big pharma companies, including Medarex and Bristol Myers Squibb, where he contributed to multiple clinical oncology programs.

Charlie earned his B.S. from Dalian University and M.S. from Saint Louis University, and he completed his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego.

Louise is developing novel machine learning technologies to enable highly multiplexed microscopy studies of neurodegenerative disease phenotypes. Louise joined Nine Square in 2021 after completing post-doctoral research in the laboratories of Nine Square co-founders Steven Altschuler and Lani Wu.

Louise has a Ph.D. in Cell and Systems Biology from The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and a B.Sc. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Sheffield.

Helen is responsible for characterizing the therapeutic profiles and molecular mechanisms of functional compounds. A passionate molecular biologist with expertise in mitochondrial metabolism, bioenergetics, and redox homeostasis at multiple levels of biology, Helen’s research focuses on the engagement of mitochondrial metabolism in the pathogenesis and exploration of novel therapeutic targets for variety of age-related diseases. Before joining Nine Square, she worked as a research scientist at Calico Life Science and at AstraZeneca, where she led research activities in multidisciplinary teams in a highly collaborative and GxP-regulated environment.

Helen received her Ph.D. in Life Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where she investigated the role of mitochondrial bioenergetics and potential therapeutic targets in cardiovascular diseases and obesity. She performed her postdoctoral work at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, studying the biology of aging and the involvement of mitochondrial redox homeostasis in the development of age related neuronal and hepatic diseases.

Jacob is leading biology research in one of the company’s programs. He has a background in molecular neuroscience, with experience ranging from structural biology to neuronal physiology. Before joining Nine Square, he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California San Francisco, studying cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurotransmitter transporters in synaptic transmission.

Jacob holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Copenhagen.

Pei-I Tsai is developing in vitro disease models for high throughput studies to target neurodegenerative diseases. Before joining Nine Square in May 2022, Pei-I served as a research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Patrick O’Farrell at the University of California San Francisco, identifying a novel therapeutic method to treat mitochondrial diseases.

Pei-I received his Ph.D. from National Taiwan University for work performed at Academia Sinica in Taipei, studying the signaling mechanism of experience-dependent structural synaptic plasticity. He completed his postdoctoral research at Stanford University to dissect the mechanism of mitochondrial membrane organization and identify a novel Parkinson’s disease risk factor, Mic60.

Sam investigates the biology of the company’s most promising targets and pathways as well as assessing lead molecules in cell-based assays. His responsibilities include developing new assays related to the mechanism of action of both neurodegenerative diseases and their experimental treatments. Before joining Nine Square in 2022, Sam worked at Frontier Medicines, where he researched small molecule therapies for KRAS-mutant cancers, and he interned at Ionis Pharmaceuticals studying the neurotoxicology of antisense drugs for neurodegenerative disorders.

Sam received his B.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles in Neuroscience and Biochemistry while working under David Nathanson designing small molecule therapies for glioblastoma.

Olivia handles responsibilities such as assay validation and optimization as well as developing stable cell lines expressing different markers using a variety of lentiviral constructs. Previously, in 2021, she interned at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, CA where she researched the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein.

Olivia received her B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and is currently working towards a graduate degree in Biotechnology from the University of San Francisco.

Kristine joined Nine Square Therapeutics in July 2022 as Head of Program Management. Prior to joining Nine Square, Kristine led the Program and Alliance Management function at Frontier Medicines and served as a project manager for the Centers for Therapeutic Innovation at Pfizer. Before moving into program and project management, Kristine began her career as a scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Mary-Claire King at the University of Washington before joining the preclinical research team at Seattle Genetics where she contributed to the advancement of multiple antibody-drug conjugate programs in oncology.

Kristine received her B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Washington and has earned her Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute.

Maike received her master’s degree in Systems Biology from ETH Zurich. The last several years she spent as a lab manager and overseeing various research projects in cancer and neurodegenerative research at UCSF in the laboratories of NineSquare co-founders Steven Altschuler and Lani Wu.

Sethu will lead efforts to build the preclinical, translational biomarker platform and clinical disease validation for our programs as they move towards clinical development. Previously, he has held scientific leadership positions at Escape Bio, Annexon, and prior to that at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck. He has led the discovery and development of small molecule and antibody-based therapies from early discovery to clinical target engagement studies in areas including neurodegeneration, ophthalmology and autoimmune disease.

Sethu has a PhD in Neuroscience from Washington State University with post-doctoral research experiences from the Max-Planck Institute at Heidelberg and the Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

Charlene supports the characterization of lead molecular compounds that act on novel therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative diseases. She investigates the properties of mitochondrial metabolism and dysfunction involved in disease states and the corresponding mechanisms of these compounds. Before joining Nine Square, Charlene worked previously at MapLight Therapeutics, where she researched circuitry involved in certain psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases, and at Genentech, where she contributed to studies on therapeutic interventions for Parkinson’s Disease on the Translational Neuroscience team.

Charlene received her B.A. in Cellular/Molecular Neuroscience from Scripps College. While an undergrad, she worked with Dr. Rachita Sumbria at Keck Graduate Institute on a brain-penetrable therapeutic for Alzheimer’s Disease.

As a Principal Scientist in the chemistry group, Damoder is responsible for leading Nine Square medicinal chemistry programs and setting and implementing drug discovery strategies such as small molecule hit generation, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization activities. Damoder uses his expertise to apply state-of-the-art structure- and property-based design principles to advance the Nine Square CNS discovery programs.

Prior to joining Nine Square, he worked as a senior research scientist at ActivX Biosciences and as a scientist at Emory School of Medicine, where he contributed to the small molecule drug discovery programs for neurodegenerative diseases and other GPCR-targets. He also conducted post-doctoral research at department of pharmaceutical sciences, Union University, focused on medicinal chemistry and development of novel methodologies for the synthesis of heterocycles and total synthesis of natural products. Damoder received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. (Organic Chemistry) from Osmania University. He completed Ph.D. in Chemistry from CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIR-IICT).

Seth is founder and managing partner of ATP (Apple Tree Partners), a leading life sciences venture capital firm with $2.65B in committed capital. Seth began investing in life sciences in 1991 as a venture partner at Sevin Rosen Funds and went on to be a general partner at Oak Investment Partners before starting ATP in 1999. Some of his earlier investments include Aileron Therapeutics, Akero Therapeutics, ArQule, Coelacanth, Corvidia Therapeutics, Cyrano Sciences, Gloucester Pharmaceuticals, HeartWare International, Informed Access, SGX Pharmaceuticals, Stoke Therapeutics, Syntimmune, Tendyne, Ultracision, and ViroPharma.

Seth currently serves on the boards of Akero Therapeutics and Stoke Therapeutics as well as the 15 portfolio companies created within ATP V, ATP’s current fund, to date. From 2002 to 2010, he was a member of the board of the International Partnership for Microbicides, a nonprofit product development partnership focused on women’s health and HIV prevention.

Seth received an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.D. and MBA both from Columbia University, and completed a surgery internship at the Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York.

Spiros is a co-founder of Nine Square Therapeutics and is also a co-founder of ATP portfolio companies Nereid Therapeutics, Initial Therapeutics, Evercrisp Biosciences, Deep Apple Therapeutics, and Apertor Pharmaceuticals. As a venture partner at ATP, he is drawing upon experiences gained in his career leading scientific innovation and discovery at some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies.

At Biogen, Spiros established and led the External Portfolio Innovation unit within Research and Development. Prior to his employment at Biogen, he was vice president of Medicinal Chemistry at Pfizer, where he led teams to deliver clinical pipelines in disease areas including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and neuroscience. Under his leadership, his divisions explored cutting edge drug discovery concepts including selective protein translation inhibition, design of macrocycles for drug discovery in tough target space, allosterism, and tissue targeting design strategies for the delivery of small molecule, oligonucleotide therapeutics and other modalities.

Spiros earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Iowa State University in 1990 and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He currently serves as adjunct full professor in the department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.

As chief scientific officer and a venture partner at ATP, Mike applies expertise gained through a successful career leading research and development at major biopharmaceutical companies. As executive vice president for Research and Development at Biogen, he led discovery sciences, translational medicine, clinical development, and regulatory sciences, with a focus on neurological, immunological, and rare diseases. He significantly expanded and diversified Biogen’s clinical portfolio, transformed its R&D productivity, advanced more than 20 novel clinical candidates, and oversaw global filings and approvals of Spinraza^TM (nusinersen), the first drug approved for spinal muscular atrophy. Prior to Biogen, Mike was Biotherapeutics group senior vice president and Neuroscience chief scientific officer at Pfizer, where he created and advanced the neuroscience and rare disease portfolios; directed global development activities in biologics design, synthesis, and manufacturing; steered academic collaborations focused on immunology and oncology; and successfully brought 22 compounds into the clinic. Before entering industry in 2010, he was a professor and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Duke University Medical Center, where he pioneered studies on neuronal organelles and the trafficking of neurotransmitter receptors. He has received numerous awards, authored more than 100 scientific papers, and served on multiple editorial boards as well as advisory boards for the National Institutes of Health, private foundations and many other organizations spanning industry, academia and government.

Mike earned a B.S. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and holds M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the co-founder of ATP portfolio companies Intergalactic Therapeutics, Aulos Bioscience, Ascidian Therapeutics, and Replicate Bioscience.

Matt is Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at University of California San Francisco, where he has been a faculty member since 2002. An author of more than 150 research publications and the recipient of an NSF Career award and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, he is a leading authority in computer-aided drug design and computational structural biology and biophysics. His research interests docking against homology models and flexible protein binding sites, membrane permeability, antibody modeling, mechanisms of protein regulation by post-translational modifications, allostery, and pH.

Matt earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 and did his postdoctoral work at Oxford University and Columbia University. He is the co-founder of innovative life sciences companies including Cedilla Therapeutics, Circle Pharma, Global Blood Therapeutics, and Relay Therapeutics, and he serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Schrödinger, the leading computational chemistry platform company.

John is a veteran of the California life science community who has founded and lead several successful biotechnology companies in his 20-year career. He is currently Founder, CEO and Executive Chairman of Endeavor Biomedicines, a company funded in 2021 to develop novel therapeutics for oncology and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Prior to that, John was the Founder and CEO of Impact Biomedicines (now owned by Bristol-Myers Squibb), the developer of fedratinib, which has subsequently been approved worldwide for the treatment of myelofibrosis. He began his career as Director of Research at TargeGen in 2001, where he co-discovered fedratinib and led a team identifying small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and eye disease. John is an inventor on 100+ patents and the author of 50+ scientific articles. He received his Ph.D. in medical physiology and a B.S. in biochemistry from Texas A&M University.

Lani and Steve are Professors in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Over the past decade, they have jointly developed a research program that combines experimental biology, data sciences and modeling to attack fundamental problems in cell biology and drug discovery. Their research careers started in mathematics at the interface of analysis and geometry. Their work found diverse applications, including the Poincare Conjecture, robotics and computer graphics. They transitioned to engineering at Microsoft, where they co-led an invention team that developed machine learning approaches for improving human-computer interactions, including in the areas of computer vision, social networking and noisy speech recognition. They entered systems biology and pharmacology by way of the biotech startup Rosetta Inpharmatics and have been pioneering members of the Harvard University Bauer Fellow program and the Green Center for Systems Biology at UTSW, as well as visiting faculty at MSRI in Berkeley and Google Brain.

In their laboratories at UCSF, Steve and Lani tackle systems-level questions in biology, disease and pharmacology. They have a passion for teaching and sharing their excitement for research with new scientists. As co-founders of Nine Square Therapeutics, they remain involved in the company’s research activities and are observers on the company’s Board of Directors.

Sami is Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan. Sami received his Ph.D. in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University in St. Louis, where he investigated prion diseases. His neurology residency, at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), gave him the opportunity to train with some of the premier clinicians and scientists in neurodegenerative diseases, including Bruce Miller, head of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, and Cathy Lomen-Hoerth, Director of the UCSF ALS Center. During his residency and postdoctoral fellowship, he worked with Steve Finkbeiner at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, where he established one of the first human neuronal models of familial ALS and FTD.

Sami’s research is focused on the investigation of important yet unanswered questions in neurodegenerative diseases, combining basic biology with translational research and technology development. His lab is using innovative technologies and methods involving fluorescence microscopy, computer science and engineering, bioinformatics, genome engineering and molecular biology to investigate critical abnormalities in RNA and protein metabolism in ALS and FTD.

Sami serves on the executive advisory board of the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research and acts on the scientific advisory boards of the Live Like Lou Foundation and Synapticure, Inc. He takes an active role in their efforts to raise awareness of ALS and participates in local and national fundraising efforts.

Robert is Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Weill Institute for Neurosciences in the UCSF School of Medicine.

Robert is a neuroscientist known for his work on the molecular and cellular basis of neurotransmitter release and its role in Parkinson's disease. In his research, he and his colleagues have identified several proteins implicated in Parkinson's disease. He has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Established Investigator Award of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders, and he serves on the editorial boards of several journals and the scientific advisory board of the Parkinson's Foundation.

Robert attended Yale College and Johns Hopkins Medical School. He trained in clinical neurology, studied as a postdoctoral fellow with William J. Rutter at UCSF, and joined the faculty at UCLA in 1990 before returning to UCSF in 1995. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.

As chief scientific officer and a venture partner at ATP, Mike applies expertise gained through a successful career leading research and development at major biopharmaceutical companies. As executive vice president for Research and Development at Biogen, he led discovery sciences, translational medicine, clinical development, and regulatory sciences, with a focus on neurological, immunological, and rare diseases. He significantly expanded and diversified Biogen’s clinical portfolio, transformed its R&D productivity, advanced more than 20 novel clinical candidates, and oversaw global filings and approvals of Spinraza^TM (nusinersen), the first drug approved for spinal muscular atrophy. Prior to Biogen, Mike was Biotherapeutics group senior vice president and Neuroscience chief scientific officer at Pfizer, where he created and advanced the neuroscience and rare disease portfolios; directed global development activities in biologics design, synthesis, and manufacturing; steered academic collaborations focused on immunology and oncology; and successfully brought 22 compounds into the clinic. Before entering industry in 2010, he was a professor and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Duke University Medical Center, where he pioneered studies on neuronal organelles and the trafficking of neurotransmitter receptors. He has received numerous awards, authored more than 100 scientific papers, and served on multiple editorial boards as well as advisory boards for the National Institutes of Health, private foundations and many other organizations spanning industry, academia and government.

Mike earned a B.S. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and holds M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the co-founder of ATP portfolio companies Intergalactic Therapeutics, Aulos Bioscience, Ascidian Therapeutics, and Replicate Bioscience.

Aimee is Associate Professor of Neurology and the John Douglas French Foundation Endowed Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine.

Aimee is an award-winning physician scientist whose laboratory studies the basic mechanisms underlying neurogenerative disorders. An expert in the diagnosis and treatment of age-related cognitive conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, Lewy body disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration, she maintains an active clinic in UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center. A dedicated educator and mentor, she teaches medical students, serves as a research mentor in the UCSF SRTP and San Francisco Build Scholars program, and co-chairs the Neuroscience Graduate Program's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee.

Aimee received her B.S. degree from Brown University and her medical and doctoral degrees from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. She completed her internship at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and her neurology residency at UCSF, where she was chief resident. She has fellowship training in behavioral neurology and molecular genetics. She joined the UCSF faculty in 2007.

Roberto Zoncu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Roberto is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He studied molecular biology at the University of Pisa, Italy, where he completed his undergraduate thesis on the mechanisms of asymmetric stem cell division during brain development. He then moved to Yale University to pursue a Ph.D. in Cell Biology. Working in Pietro De Camilli’s laboratory, he used advanced microscopy and chemical genetic techniques to interrogate how a class of phospholipids known as phosphoinositides control endocytic vesicle traffic and maturation. In 2008, he joined the laboratory of David Sabatini at the Whitehead Institute/MIT. There, he combined biochemical and microscopy-based assays to understand how lysosomes govern the signaling activity of the master growth regulator, mTORC1 kinase, and how these organelles generally function as a metabolic signaling centers. In 2014 he joined the Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology division of the Molecular and Cell Biology Department at UC Berkeley and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019.