Advances in the Treatment of Neurodegeneration
Schedule
Wed Jan 21 2026 at 05:30 pm to 07:45 pm
UTC+00:00Location
School of Clinical Medicine | Cambridge, EN
This event will focus on cutting-edge strategies for developing and validating new therapies for Parkinson's disease.Agenda
đź•‘: 05:30 PM - 05:35 PM
Welcome
Host: Alex Samoshkin, Office for Translational Research, UoC
đź•‘: 05:35 PM - 05:50 PM
Validating a novel drug target in Parkinson's: where to begin?
Host: Nataly Hastings, CEO, Cellestial Health, Cambridge
Info: Dr Nat Hastings has background in clinical neurosciences and bioengineering at the University of Cambridge. She established "Cellestial Health" to spin-out academic IP and develop new disease-modifying drugs for Parkinson's and other neurological conditions. She raised over ÂŁ1M in academic and commercial grants plus equity funding to advance the translational developments.
đź•‘: 05:50 PM - 06:10 PM
Developing a new therapy - understanding positioning: case study in Parkinson'
Host: Simon Stott, Director of Research, Cure Parkinson's,
Info: Simon leads on fostering promising new lines of research, promoting beneficial worldwide scientific and clinical collaborations across the community. Simon plays a leading role in the ongoing growth of Cure Parkinson’s International Linked Clinical Trials (iLCT) programme, working alongside the iLCT Committee to ensure the most promising drugs are prioritised for clinical trial in Parkinson’s.
đź•‘: 06:10 PM - 06:30 PM
Immunosuppression for Parkinson's disease?: Learning points from AZA-PD
Host: Julia Greenland, Neurology Registrar, Addenbrooke's Hosp
Info: Dr Julia Greenland is a neurology registrar working in Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK. She trained in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, graduating in 2011. She completed her training in general medicine, and since 2016 has worked as a specialty registrar in neurology in the East of England. She has had an interest in Parkinson's disease since undergraduate training, undertaking an intercalated research masters degree with a clinical project orientated around the interaction of cognition and gait in Parkinson’s disease. She completed her PhD in 2024, which explored the role of the immune system in Parkinson’s disease. She was the sub-investigator of AZA-PD, a clinical trial of azathioprine in early Parkinson’s disease, and was involved in the design, set-up, running and analysis of this early phase randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial.
đź•‘: 06:30 PM - 06:50 PM
Aggregation State Selective Protein Degradation: A Novel Therapeutic Modality
Host: Jonathan Benn, TRIMTECH Therapeutics, Cambridge
Info: Jonathan completed his PhD in the lab of Professor Will McEwan, where he developed genetically encoded degraders to selectively target and remove pathological aggregated tau protein from within living cells.
These degraders utilise the catalytic domain of the E3 ubiquitin ligase TRIM21 and demonstrated for the first time that pre-formed tau protein aggregates can be degraded via the TRIM21 pathway.
đź•‘: 06:50 PM - 07:45 PM
Drinks, buffet & networking
Where is it happening?
School of Clinical Medicine, Hills Road, Cambridge, United KingdomGBP 0.00
