“Shifting Paradigms in Neurotherapeutics”

Dr. Al La Spada, Director, and Dr. Rob Spitale, Co-Director, of the UCI Center for Neurotherapeutics are delighted to announce our upcoming Third Annual Symposium.

Date:
Friday, October 3, 2025

Time:
8a-9a | Breakfast
9a – 6p | Symposium

Location:
Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences
Sue Gross Auditorium
856 Health Sciences Quad
Irvine, CA 92697

The purpose of the Symposium will be to familiarize attendees with the UCI Center for Neurotherapeutics and introduce attendees to the exciting translational neuroscience research happening right on our campus and in labs across the country. We hope that attendees will:

1. Learn about the vision that drives us at the UCI Center for Neurotherapeutics and our ongoing effort to advance drug development on campus.
   
2. Become acquainted with cutting-edge approaches being applied to develop innovative models and novel therapeutic solutions for neurological diseases. Lecture topics will include drug discovery and high-throughput screening methods to identify rational drug targets. Experts from diverse disciplines will explain how they are tackling the challenge of delivering small molecules and biological agents across the blood-brain barrier.
   
3. Appreciate the many opportunities for cross-disciplinary interaction and collaboration in this field. Our number one core value at the UCI Center for Neurotherapeutics is to promote collaboration across campus, especially between faculty in the physical sciences and the biological sciences. We believe that only by combining such multi-disciplinary expertise and diverse perspectives will it be possible to unlock new avenues of discovery and accelerate progress toward developing meaningful solutions for therapy development.

Our exceptional line-up of guest speakers and UCI faculty speakers include:

1. Michael R. Hayden (University of British Columbia); Novel therapy for Huntington’s Disease
2. Karin Briner (Genentech); Next generation medicines
3. Rama Ranganathan (University of Chicago); Evolutionary design of proteins
4. Robert Kennedy (University of Michigan); Metabolomics for drug addiction therapy
5. Hang Lu (Georgia Tech); Understanding how the brain learns
6. Jeffery Kelly (Scripps Research); Autophagy lysosome modulators
7. Beth Lopour (UC Irvine); EEG biomarkers for pediatric epilepsy
8. Tim Downing (UC Irvine); Deconstructing stem cell fate decisions
9. Claire Henchcliffe (UC Irvine); Parkinson’s disease stem cell therapies
10. Quinton Smith (UC Irvine); Engineering stem cell fate

Registration is free. Whether you are a student, postdoctoral trainee, faculty member, or staff member, we encourage you to join us, so please mark your calendars!

*Please register by Wednesday, October 1, 2025