Franz F. Hefti

Biography

 Franz F. Hefti, PhD, world-renowned KOL in the field of neurodegenerative diseases, joined Olatec’s Drug Development Team in September 2016 and became a member of the Scientific Advisory Board in November 2016.  For Olatec, Dr. Hefti has been contributing leading expertise in the development of dapansutrile in the design and conduct of Olatec’s preclinical programs in Alzheimer’s disease.  Dr. Hefti is President and Interim CEO of Proclara Inc., a biotech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and engaged in drug discovery and development of therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease and other protein misfolding diseases. Prior to joining Proclara, he was CSO at Avid Radiopharmaceuticals Inc., a company that developed imaging diagnostics, which was acquired in 2010 by Lilly. He was also EVP of Drug Development at Rinat Neuroscience, a company with antibody programs for pain and neurological indications, which was acquired by Pfizer in 2006. He has been co-founder, board member or scientific advisor to several other start-up biotech companies in the United States. Previous to his current involvement with biotech companies, Dr. Hefti held senior management positions at Merck & Co. and Genentech and he was Professor at the University of Southern California and Associate Professor at the University of Miami, where he carried out discovery research on therapeutic applications of trophic factors. Dr. Hefti has published over 250 papers on neurotrophic factors and topics in neuropharmacology, as well as a textbook, Drug Discovery for Nervous System Diseases. He received his PhD from the University of Zurich and did his postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Research Interest

Neurology