About us
Disarm Therapeutics is creating breakthrough disease-modifying therapeutics to treat patients with neurological diseases by preventing axonal degeneration.
Axonal degeneration is a common yet unaddressed pathology in a broad range of chronic and acute diseases of the central, ocular, and peripheral nervous systems.
Our scientific founders have identified SARM1 as the central driver of axonal degeneration, which causes severe sensory, motor, and cognitive symptoms and disease progression.
Disarm is developing SARM1 inhibitors to directly prevent the loss of axons, providing a breakthrough treatment approach for patients with severe neurological diseases including multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, glaucoma, and peripheral neuropathies.
Team
Disarm was founded in 2016 by Dr. Jeffrey Milbrandt and Dr. Aaron DiAntonio of Washington University in St. Louis, Atlas Venture, and a team of exceptional scientists and drug developers.
Jeffrey Milbrandt, MD, PhD, co-chair
Chair, Department of Genetics, James S. McDonnell Professor of Genetics, Pathology and Immunology, Medicine, and Neurology, Washington University; founder, Disarm
Aaron DiAntonio, MD, PhD, co-chair
Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Developmental Biology, Washington University; founder, Disarm
Peter Calabresi, MD
Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience, Director of the Multiple Sclerosis Center, and Director, Division of Neuroimmunology and Neurological Infections, Johns Hopkins University
Douglas Kerr, MD, PhD, MBA
Head of Preclinical Research and Clinical Development, Generation Bio
Steven Scherer, MD, PhD
Ruth Wagner Van Meter and J. Ray Van Meter Professor of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania
Jeffrey Milbrandt, MD, PhD
Chair, Department of Genetics, Professor of Genetics, Pathology and Immunology, Medicine, and Neurology, Washington University; Founder, Disarm
Liza Leventhal, PhD
Liza earned her Ph.D. in neuropsychology from the City University of New York and did her post-doctoral training at Rush-Presbyterian Medical Center, Center for Brain Repair.
Ritu Namdev
Prior to Disarm, Ritu was Vice President, Project Management and Clinical Operations, at Summit Therapeutics. In this role, she led a cross-functional team to deliver near and long-term strategies for the Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and Clostridium difficile (C. diff) programs. Before Summit, she held roles of increasing responsibility at Sanofi-Aventis, Quintiles, Genentech and Hoffmann La-Roche in program management, preclinical development, clinical operations and manufacturing.
Ritu has a BS and a Master of Science degree from the University of Bombay, as well as an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business’s Global Executive Program.
Jason Rhodes
Prior to joining Atlas, Jason was president of Epizyme (NASDAQ: EPZM), where he charted the company’s strategic course from a private, research-stage business into the clinic and through partnerships with Celgene, GSK and others and a successful IPO in 2013. Prior to Epizyme, Jason led business development at Alnylam (NASDAQ: ALNY), where he was a member of the leadership team and responsible for partnerships with Roche, Takeda, GSK, Ionis, and others. Before Alnylam, Jason was a founder and partner with Fidelity Biosciences (now F-Prime Capital), the life sciences venture capital arm of Fidelity Investments, where he led investments in therapeutics companies including Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IRWD), FoldRx (purchased by Pfizer), and Mersana Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MRSN).
Jason received his BA from Yale University and his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the advisory board of the Harvard Institute for RNA Medicine, the BIDMC Board of Overseers, the Blavatnik Fund at Yale University, and the Berklee College of Music Presidential Advisory Council.
Rajesh Devraj
Prior to joining Disarm Therapeutics he was Chief Scientific Officer of Padlock Therapeutics until its acquisition by BMS in March 2016. Raj previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Euclises Pharmaceuticals and Senior Vice President of Deciphera Pharmaceuticals. Before that time, he was Senior Vice President of Jubilant Drug Discovery & Development and held positions of increasing leadership responsibility with Pfizer Global R&D and legacy Pharmacia and Searle companies. He has led discovery & early clinical development teams that have advanced multiple candidates into clinical trials for refractory cancers, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetic nephropathy, COPD, and pain. Raj has BS in Pharmacy and received his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Duquesne University.
Raul Krauss
Raul previously held roles as Director of Neurosciences at AlphaGene, and in neuroscience discovery research at Biogen-Idec and Genetics Institute/Wyeth. Raul earned his PhD in Neurobiology from Harvard University, under the supervision of Gerald Fischbach, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. He has served on ad-hoc NIH review panels for spinal cord trauma and brain cancer research, has several publications and patent applications, and authored a chapter in “Culturing Nerve Cells” (Banker and Goslin, Eds, MIT Press), a standard textbook in the field.
Tom Engber
Scott Holmes
Peter Keller
Prior to Selecta, Peter was Vice President, Head of Mergers & Acquisitions and Alliance Management at Solvay Pharmaceuticals, where he negotiated license and acquisition agreements in various therapeutic areas such as vaccines, neurology and cardiology. He was the lead negotiator for the $1.5 billion fenofibrate alliance between Solvay Pharmaceuticals and Abbott Laboratories and was instrumental in the $6.2 billion acquisition of Solvay Pharmaceuticals by Abbott Laboratories. Peter was then appointed by Abbott to lead the post-merger integration resulting in the spin-out of what became AbbVie.
Earlier in his career, he spent nearly a decade as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and Simon Kucher & Partners. Peter received his MSc. in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
Robert Hughes
Prior to joining Disarm, Robert was a Senior Associate Director and Senior Research Fellow at Boehringer-Ingelheim and prior to that a Senior Principal Scientist at Pfizer. Robert has contributed to the delivery of two novel drug candidates into clinical-proof-of concept trials and to the identification and development of >15 clinical candidates across multiple therapeutic areas. He is the author of over 45 patents and peer-reviewed publications.
He earned his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry under the guidance of Professor K.C. Nicolaou at the Scripps Research Institute and a BS in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona.
Jeffrey Milbrandt
Jeff’s research laboratory uses genomic and metabolic approaches to understand the process by which unhealthy or injured axons degenerate, an early pathologic event that underlies most neurodegenerative diseases and peripheral neuropathies. His lab has made major discoveries including identification and characterization of the GDNF neurotrophic factor family whose members are being developed into treatments for neurological disorders, and the molecular link between metabolism, NAD and axon health. He holds over 25 patents on neurotrophic factors, axonal protective agents, and their use in treating neurological disorders.
Jeff graduated from Washington University Medical School (WUSM, MD, 1978) and the University of Virginia (UVA, PhD, 1983). He completed his residency in Pathology at UVA and joined the Departments of Pathology and Medicine at WUSM in 1983. He became the David Clayson Professor of Neurology in 2005 and the Head of the Department of Genetics in 2009. Under his leadership, the Department is focusing on disease-based genetic research and helping WUSM become an international leader in Precision Medicine and Genome Engineering.
Aaron DiAntonio
Aaron serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Children’s Discovery Institute and the Board of Directors of the Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation. He organized the international meeting on the “Molecular Mechanisms of Axon Degeneration” at Jackson Laboratories in 2016 and served as Chair of the Synapses, Cytoskeleton, and Trafficking Study Section Study Section at the NIH. Aaron received research awards from the Keck, McKnight, Sloan, Mallinckrodt Foundations and the National Institutes of Health.
Aaron completed his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Harvard University and a Master’s degree in biochemistry from Cambridge University in England. He earned his MD/PhD at Stanford University and carried out postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley.
Robert Copeland
Robert received his doctorate in chemistry from Princeton University and did postdoctoral studies as the Chaim Weizmann Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He has contributed to drug discovery and development efforts leading to 18 investigational new drugs entering human clinical trials. These include the cancer drugs foretinib, afuresertib, pinometostat, tazemetostat, Tafinlar (dabrafenib) and Mekinist (trametinib) and the antibiotic Altabax (retapamulin). Robert has contributed more than 200 publications to the scientific literature, holds 14 issued U.S. patents and has authored 5 books in the areas of protein science and enzymology. His most recent book, Evaluation of Enzyme Inhibitors in Drug Discovery: A Guide for Medicinal Chemists and Pharmacologists, 2nd Edition (Wiley, Hoboken, NJ), published in March 2013. In 2016 Robert was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Kimi Iguchi
Kimi holds a B.A. in chemistry from Drew University and an M.B.A. from Northeastern University. She earned her CPA in Massachusetts.
Gerhard Koenig
Previously, he was the President & CEO of Quartet Medicine, an Atlas backed biotech company which was partnered with Merck. Before Quartet Medicine he spent 13 years as the Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of FORUM Pharmaceuticals. Under his scientific and strategic leadership FORUM successfully developed a CNS-focused late stage clinical pipeline. Prior to FORUM, Gerhard was the Vice President, Scientific Programs and Evaluation for Fidelity Biosciences Group (now F’ Prime Capital), the lead investor in FORUM. Before that, Gerhard spent more than 10 years at Bayer Corporation in West Haven, Connecticut, and at Bayer AG, Germany, in various functions, including Director of the Dementia Research Department overseeing clinical entry of several small molecule compounds. Gerhard has co-authored major scientific publications, patents, and reviews of new research findings in prestigious journals.
He received his PhD and MS degrees in molecular and cellular neurobiology with a minor in biochemistry, graduating summa cum laude from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Peter Calabresi
Peter earned a BS from Yale College, MD from Brown University, and completed a research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has been the principal investigator on several clinical trials and also oversees translational laboratory research projects. He is the recipient of a Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator award from the NIH. Peter also recently received the Barancik Award for Innovation in MS research.
Al Sandrock
Al received a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and a PhD in Neurobiology from Harvard University. He completed an internship in medicine, a residency and chief residency in neurology, and a clinical fellowship in neuromuscular disease and clinical neurophysiology (electromyography) at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Al is also a Director at Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. and at Praxis Precision Medicines, Inc., and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at Flex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He serves as Chairman of the Board of the PhRMA Foundation.
Steven Scherer
For almost 40 years, Steven has sought to understand the causes and treatments of peripheral neuropathies, and has developed a focus on inherited neuropathies. He sees people who have neuropathy in his clinics, and his laboratory efforts are focused on neuropathy, too. He has served on NIH Study Section, on the medical board of the CMT Association, and is the current president of the Peripheral Nerve Society. He has taught/mentored undergraduate, medical and graduate students, residents, fellows, and has served on 44 thesis committees. Steven is an author on 143 original research papers and 69 reviews.
Scott Brun
In his previous role, Scott was the head of Pharmaceutical Development at AbbVie, a global scientific and operational organization responsible for advancing a broad portfolio of early and late stage pre-registration pipeline compounds as well as marketed products within oncology, neurology, immunology, renal, infectious disease, and women’s and men’s health therapeutic areas.
Scott earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his medical degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed ophthalmology training at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary/Harvard Medical School.
Jean George
Jean has been featured on the Forbes Midas List and was previously a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. She has been in the biopharmaceutical industry for over 20 years, including 10 years with Genzyme Corporation, where she held a variety of operational roles in marketing, product development, and business development, including Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing. She also was Vice President and Founder of Genzyme’s Tissue Repair Division.
Jean joined BancBoston Ventures in 1998 to lead its life sciences investments. There she led investments in Neurometrix (NASDAQ: NURU), Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IRWD), NuGenesis Technologies (acquired by Waters), and Syntonix Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Biogen/Idec). Previously, Jean spent six years working in chemistry and bioresearch.
Jean has an MBA from Simmons College Graduate School of Management and a BS from the University of Maine.
Bruce Trapp
Bruce is Chairman of the Department of Neurosciences at the Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Professor of Neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He joined the Cleveland Clinic as Chairman of the Department of Neurosciences in 1994. His research investigates the cause of neurological disability in multiple sclerosis patients, cellular mechanism of brain repair in neurodegenerative diseases, and the molecular biology of myelination in the central and peripheral nervous systems. He is internationally known for his work on mechanisms of neurodegeneration and repair in multiple sclerosis and has published over 240 peer-reviewed articles and over 30 book chapters. Bruce is a member of the advisory board of major biotech companies, the National Institutes of Health and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. He is active in organizing national and international conferences related to Neurodegenerative diseases.
Bruce is the recipient of the Jordi Folch-Pi Award, the Award of the American Society of Neurochemistry, The Weil Award from the American Association of Neuropathologists, the Harry Weaver Neuroscience Scholar Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS), the Jacob Javits Award in Neuroscience from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the John Dystel Prize for MS Research from the American Academy of Neurology and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Scientific Achievement Award in Basic Science and the Award for Excellence in Science from the Cleveland Clinic.
He received his PhD from Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago, IL and postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD. He then was appointed Assistant and subsequently Associate Professor of Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Douglas Kerr
Doug is a neurologist and neuroscientist with over 120 publications in medical journals. He received his MD and PhD degree in Biochemistry and Molecular biology from Jefferson Medical College and his MBA from Princeton.
Todd Bosanac
Prior to joining Disarm, Todd held positions at Alkermes and Boehringer-Ingelheim. Most recently he led a medicinal chemistry effort that delivered a drug candidate to proceed into clinical trials. He contributed to the molecular discovery and lead optimization of several other development candidates for immunology, inflammation and cardiometabolic indications. He is the author of over 30 patents and peer-reviewed publications.
Todd earned his PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with Amos B. Smith, III at the University of Pennsylvania.
Catherine Stehman-Breen
Before joining Disarm Therapeutics, Catherine was Chief Medical Officer at Sarepta Therapeutics which focuses on RNA-targeted therapeutics. Prior to that she was Vice President, Clinical Development at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, initially as Head, Pain Therapeutic Area, and subsequently as Head, Clinical Project Management and Operations. She also served as Vice President, Global Development at Amgen, holding several leadership roles including Therapeutic Area Head for Neuroscience, Nephrology and Bone therapeutic areas. Notably, Catherine led the development programs for Prolia, approved for osteoporosis, Aimovig, approved for prevention of migraine, and Aimovig approved for the treatment of secondary hyperparathyroidism. Catherine earned her MD from the University of Chicago. She completed her residency and nephrology fellowship training at the University of Washington, where she also received an MS degree in Epidemiology. Catherine served as a faculty member in the Division of Nephrology and remains and Affiliate Associate Professor in the School of Public Health with more than 90 publications in medical journals.
Alvin Shih
Alvin was most recently CEO of Enzyvant Therapeutics, a development-stage biotechnology company. Prior to Enzyvant, he was Executive Vice President and Head of R&D at Retrophin, where he managed the development and progress of a diverse pipeline encompassing rare neurological and renal diseases. Earlier in his career, he was a founding member of Pfizer’s rare disease research unit. He was also previously a management consultant for L.E.K. Consulting and McKinsey & Company.
Alvin holds an M.D. from the University of Alabama and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
John Gustofson
John is a Managing Director of AbbVie Ventures and invests across AbbVie’s therapy areas of Immunology, Oncology, and Neuroscience. He currently serves on the Board of Disarm, Ribometrix, and Rheostat and is a Board Observer for Ribon Therapeutics. Prior to joining AbbVie, John worked at AstraZeneca as a Director of Strategic Partnering and Business Development, focusing on oncology licensing.
John has over 20 years professional experience as a bench scientist and in various market and business development roles. John has also worked in numerous biotechnology companies including Altus Pharmaceuticals, Therion Biologics, Boston Life Sciences, and Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals and spent 4 years in strategy consulting to the life sciences industry.
John holds an MS in molecular biology from Miami University and an MBA from Boston University.
Marco Passini
Prior to joining Disarm Therapeutics, Marco spent five years at Sarepta Therapeutics as Senior Director of Biology, where he led the development of next generation ASOs for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, programs that are currently in clinical trials. Before Sarepta, he spent 12 years leading scientific projects at Sanofi Genzyme, including the preclinical development of the FDA-approved ASO therapy Spinraza®️ for spinal muscular atrophy, which was done in collaboration with Ionis Pharmaceuticals. At Sanofi Genzyme, he helped develop AAV gene therapies for a variety of neurodegenerative disorders, including spinal muscular atrophy, amyloid lateral sclerosis and Niemann-Pick and Batten disease. He has over 50 peer-reviewed publications and patents.
Marco earned his PhD in Molecular Biology at the State University of New York Stony Brook in 1998 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania prior to joining the biotech industry.
Molly B. Schlagel
Molly earned her BLA and MS in Nonprofit Management and Philanthropy from Bay Path University.