Tony Altar

Biography

Tony has over 35 years of experience leading CNS drug discovery and development teams from idea to commercial success. As the former Global Head of Neuroscience at Otsuka, he led the team that discovered aripiprazole (Abilify™), the highest grossing drug worldwide in 2014, and elucidated its mechanism of action, enabling first-in class, FDA-approved uses in bipolar disease, depression, and schizophrenia. As Chief Scientific Officer at Assurex Health, he created pharmacogenomic products for ADHD and pain, and commercial successes yielded an acquisition by Myriad Genetics in 2016.  As CSO of Psychiatric Genomics, his teams were the first to pioneer microarray-based drug discovery in psychiatric diseases, revealing insulin signaling deficiency in schizophrenia. Tony also co-founded the Regeneron vision program, directed The Biomarkers Consortium of 125 government and industry participants, and led teams at Genentech. Tony has published over 135 papers in journals including Science and Nature.  He obtained his bachelors at UCLA, PhD in Psychology at UC Santa Barbara, and held a post-doctoral position in Psychobiology at UC Irvine.

Research Interest

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