Discover the visionary founders behind our groundbreaking memory loss treatment.

Karen H. Ashe, MD, PhD. (CEO, Professor) Dr. Ashe was trained as a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD, 1981, G. Schneider), physician at Harvard University (MD, 1982), and neurologist (1982-1986) and molecular biologist (NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, 1986-1989, S.B. Prusiner, and Research Assistant Professor, 1989-1992) at the University of California, San Francisco. While at the University of California, she published several influential papers on the molecular genetics and biology of prion diseases, pioneering the now well established way of studying neurodegenerative disease by examining the biological effects of disease-linked mutations in transgenic mice. She started her independent translational neuroscience research career on the faculty of the Department of Neurology at the University of Minnesota where she is currently a Professor (1992-present). She founded the N. Bud Grossman Center for Memory Research and Care at the University. Her research has significantly advanced the field of Alzheimer’s and related dementias, particularly through the development of widely used mouse models such as Tg2576 and rTg4510. Her team also discovered post translationally modified amyloid-β and tau proteins, including the Δtau314 protein formed when tau is cleaved by caspase-2, which contribute to memory loss.

She has extensive experience in establishing multidisciplinary project teams and currently leads projects focusing on treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, and frontotemporal dementia. She is an expert in behavioral pharmacology, neuropathology, biochemistry, and molecular biology, and has authored over ten papers that have each been cited more than 1000 times (Google Scholar). Dr. Ashe has been recognized for her research contributions by the Alzheimer’s Association (Khalid Iqbal Lifetime Achievement Award, 2010), MetLife Foundation (Alzheimer’s Research Award, 2005), American Academy of Neurology (Potamkin Award, 2006), and National Academy of Medicine (Elected Memory, 2009).

Michael A. Walters PhD. (CSO, Senior Research Fellow) Dr. Walters was trained as a synthetic chemist at the University of Michigan (PhD, 1986, W.H. Pearson) and the University of Rochester (NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, 1986-1989, R.K. Boeckman, Jr.). He started his independent organic synthesis research career on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth College. While at Dartmouth, he published several papers on new synthetic methods and computational chemistry, including the first comprehensive ab initio study of the 3-aza-Cope reaction.

Since 2007, Dr. Walters has been a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and Director of the Lead and Probe Discovery Group in the Institute for Therapeutics Discovery and Development (ITDD). He is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the ITDD. Before joining the UMN, he worked for ten years at Parke-Davis in Ann Arbor, MI, which merged with the Pfizer drug discovery organization. While at Pfizer, he designed combinatorial libraries of drug-like molecules to enhance the screening collection, contributed to and led late-stage neuroscience projects in schizophrenia (Ziprasidone) and anxiety (GABAA-subtype-selective PAMs), and directed hit-to-lead campaigns as director of a lead discovery group.

He has extensive experience working with multidisciplinary project teams and groups of scientists. Currently, he leads projects focusing on treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, cognitive dysfunction, and Huntington’s Disease. He is an expert in synthetic and medicinal chemistry, including cheminformatics and CADD (computer-assisted drug design). Dr. Walters is well-known for his work on assay interference compounds. In 2017, he was the communicating author of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry’s Perspective, “The Essential Medicinal Chemistry of Curcumin,” which has been viewed >150,000 times and cited more than 1200 times.

Dr. Steffen Pockes. (COO, Professor) Dr. Pockes is Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry at the Institute of Pharmacy at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He studied pharmacy, was trained as a medicinal chemist at the University of Regensburg (PhD, 2015, S. Elz) and has spent research stays at the University of Minnesota (USA, Neurology) and University of Barcelona (Spain, Biochemistry/Biomedicine).

Dr. Pockes has led an independent research group since 2018 and began collaborating with Dr. Karen Ashe and Dr. Michael Walters in 2019. His interdisciplinary approach brings together organic chemistry, pharmaceutical analytics, laboratory animal science, radiosynthesis and radioassays, cell culture and molecular biology. His research is focused on the design of novel small molecule caspase-2 inhibitors for neurodegenerative diseases and drug development for G protein-coupled receptors.

Dr. Pockes received the GDCh and DPhG Innovation Award in Medicinal Chemistry 2022. In 2024, he was awarded with the DFG Heisenberg Professorship and was appointed the Chair of his department in 2025.