DaCapo Brainscience today announced the appointment of Leslie Williams as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the appointment of Mridul Mehta, PhD, as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and the promotion of Warren Hirst, PhD, to Chief Scientific Officer (CSO). DaCapo Brainscience is focused on applying its proprietary discovery platform – an in vitro model of neurodegenerative disease that recapitulates human biology – to identify and develop small molecule therapies capable of slowing or halting progression of neurodegenerative disease.
“From inception, our vision has been to address neurodegenerative diseases at the point of progression,” said Matthew Peck, Cofounder, Senior Advisor, and former interim Chief Executive Officer of DaCapo Brainscience. “We welcome Leslie to our company and look forward to the experience she brings as we transition to our next phase of growth.”
“Neurodegenerative diseases demand new thinking—especially when it comes to identifying and prioritizing novel pathways that truly drive progression. To improve translation, we need models that mirror how disease progresses in humans—not just snapshots of biology,” said Leslie Williams, President and CEO of DaCapo Brainscience. “Our goal is to develop small molecules against novel pathways with the potential to slow or stop neurodegenerative disease, starting with Parkinson’s disease. The strong science and incredible team that’s already in place offer an opportunity to build something truly meaningful.”
“While protein aggregation events are known to be critical in neurodegenerative diseases, DaCapo's platform is capable of deciphering, in human genomes and cells, the consequences of that process that are most critical to disease progression and resilience,” said Vikram Khurana, MD, PhD, Cofounder of and Senior Advisor to DaCapo, and Tracy T. Batchelor Endowed Chair and Chief, Division of Movement Disorders, Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospitals. “In a short time, the teams led by Drs Hirst and Mehta identified a druggable, small-molecule target for Parkinson’s disease progression, reflecting the company’s potential to bring new treatments to patients.”
“A major breakthrough that led to the formation of DaCapo was our ability to convert human iPS cells into mature, aged cells - the foundation of a complex, physiological system that reconstructs Parkinson’s disease progression,” said Lorenz Studer, MD, Cofounder of DaCapo and Director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “This platform functions as a true ‘trial in a dish’, where we can test hypotheses, evaluate targets, and assess therapeutic response in human biology before moving into clinical studies.”
Dr. Hirst, as Chief Scientific Officer, will oversee scientific strategy and execution across discovery and translational research, including the development and deployment of experimental systems designed to more accurately reflect the biology and progression of neurodegenerative disease.
Dr. Mehta, as Chief Technology Officer, has been leading the evolution and scaling of DaCapo Brainscience’s computational capabilities, including the company’s machine learning and AI approaches that integrate experimental signals and predictive modeling to inform discovery and development decisions.
