Harnessing the Power of Autophagy
to Restore Health and Cure Disease

David Rubinsztein serves as a scientific advisor to PAQ Therapeutics. He is Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics and a UK Dementia Research Institute Group Leader at the University of Cambridge, where he also serves as the Deputy Director of the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research and Academic Lead of the Alzheimer’s Research ALBORADA UK Cambridge Drug Discovery Institute. Dr. Rubinsztein has made major contributions to the field of neurodegeneration with the discovery by his laboratory that autophagy regulates the levels of intracytoplasmic aggregate-prone proteins that cause many neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Dedicated to the pursuit of understanding in how autophagy is linked to these diseases, Dr. Rubinsztein has been an author on more than 400 scientific papers and was ranked as the 4th most cited European author from 2007 to 2013 in cell biology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences and an EMBO member. He is currently focused on understanding how to induce autophagy in vivo to remove toxic proteins and avoid the development of neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Rubinsztein completed his PhD in the Medical Research Council/University of Cape Town Unit for the Cell Biology of Atherosclerosis.   Learn more about David’s research

Jared Rutter serves as a scientific advisor to PAQ Therapeutics. He is a Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and holds the Dee Glen and Ida Smith Endowed Chair for Cancer Research at the University of Utah. Dr. Rutter is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In addition to leading his laboratory at the University of Utah, Dr. Rutter is actively involved in translating these academic discoveries into therapies as a founder, consultant and board member of several companies and venture firms. Dr. Rutter also serves as co-Director of the Diabetes and Metabolism Center at the University of Utah and co-Leader of the Nuclear Control of Cell Growth and Differentiation at Huntsman Cancer Institute. Dr. Rutter received his PhD from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 2001. Learn more about Jared’s research 

James Summers serves as a scientific advisor to PAQ Therapeutics. He has over 30 years of drug discovery and pharmaceutical research management experience. Previously, Dr. Summers was Vice President of Neuroscience Research at AbbVie, where he led efforts focused on the discovery of new drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, pain and psychiatric disorders. Under his leadership, teams have advanced more than 20 compounds into clinical development. He also established new research sites in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Shanghai, China, was an architect of strategies that defined the future direction of global research organizations and championed multiple successful outlicensing deals, biotech collaborations and venture investments. Dr. Summers earned a PhD in organic chemistry from Harvard University.

Jin-Quan Yu serves as a scientific advisor to PAQ Therapeutics. He is also a Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute, where he leads pioneering research in the field of selective C-H activation. Dr. Yu is an award-winning chemist whose discoveries have paved the way to powerful new techniques used in fields ranging from drug discovery to materials science. The success of his research has seen Dr. Yu’s ligands extensively commercialized by pharma companies who use the technology to perform late-stage functionalization on lead molecules. This enables them to create many different analogues of potential drug candidates to quickly analyze the impact of different functional groups on a compound’s bioactivity. Dr. Yu received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge.   Learn more about Jin-Quan’s research