Patricia Spilman, MA

Patricia has over 20 years of experience in neurodegenerative disease research, including 12 years with world-renowned neuropathologist Stephen J. DeArmond, M.D., Ph.D., and Nobel Laureate, Stanley Prusiner, M.D. at the University of California, San Francisco. For the last ten years, her focus has been on development of new therapeutics as part of an Alzheimer's disease (AD) drug discovery team following a pharmaceutical industry model in an academic research setting. Patricia played a key role in the ADDN at the Buck and her work has resulted in advancement of AD therapeutic candidate tropisetron to clinical trials. In the Drug Discovery lab Patricia supervises and performs in vivo pharmacokinetic/dynamic studies, collects and analyzes all project data, and she is frequently the presenter of project status to funding partners. The success of our current program, starting at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, CA and continuing at the Drug Discovery Lab at UCLA, has resulted in generation of multiple NCEs and garnered significant venture capital investment. In addition to writing grants and three first-author publications in the last 6 years, Patricia gave presentations at international scientific conferences such as the Alzheimer's Association International Conference and the Society for Neuroscience Conference, and to the lay public.