About the Speakers

Leslie M. Thompson, PhD
University of California, Irvine
2013 Leslie Gehry Brenner Prize for Innovation in Science Recipient

Dr. Leslie Thompson has studied Huntington’s disease for most of her scientific career. She was a member of the HDF’s Venezuela HD Project that identified the causative gene for HD in 1993. She is trying to understand how the HD mutation damages brain cells and identify targets for new drugs to prevent or ameliorate the damage. She is also looking at how the mutation influences modifications of the huntingtin protein and other cellular molecules. In addition, Dr. Thompson worked with a group of investigators to establish the HD patient-derived iPS cell consortium (induced pluripotent stem cells) and is using stem cells to study HD through multi-institutional collaborations and Big Data approaches. She is currently evaluating the use of human neural stem cells as a possible therapy for HD.

Steven Finkbeiner, MD, PhD
Taube/Koret Center for Neurodegenerative Disease
Gladstone Institutes
University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Steven Finkbeiner is interested in understanding mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease and developing therapeutic strategies and therapies. He has studied HD since 1998, inventing and applying innovative methods and tools, including robotic microscopy, stem cells and artificial intelligence. His landmark study in 2004 in Nature changed the way the field thought about the hallmark pathology in Huntington’s disease, the most cited paper in neuroscience for the decade. With philanthropists in the San Francisco Bay Area, he established the Taube-Koret Center, which works to translate the most promising discoveries from the labs into therapeutics, often in partnership with drug companies. His most promising HD therapeutic strategy stimulates a pathway in cells that helps clear the abnormal Huntingtin protein.