Q&A with Rene Anand of Neurxstem Inc
CEO & Founder
Principal Series:
Neurxstem Inc. is a Predictive and Precision Genomic Medicine Company. It has made a novel, first in class, Neurxstem Neural Organoid Platform™ (NNOPTm) that closely mimics the human central nervous system (CNS). The NNOPTm was developed to:
• Diagnose brain disorders and diseases early using newly discovered predictive biomarkers
• Discover novel upstream therapeutic targets using newly discovered predictive biomarker
• Perform drug toxicity, safety, and efficacy (TSE) testing with a highly advanced human platform
Join us for a private Family Office Insight Webinar featuring Dr. Rene Anand, CEO & Founder of Neurxstem Inc,
An avant-garde Precision and Predictive Genomic Brain Medicine company. It has developed an advanced proprietary human stem cell derived platform to develop early and precise diagnostics and therapeutics for a multitude of brain disorders.
June 15, 2021 at 2:15pm-3:15pm EST
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What are the key challenges to advancing mental health and wellness?
The human brain has remained a black box because of its inaccessibility other than through imaging technologies like MRI. MRI unfortunately does not provide any insight into the causes of brain diseases or therapeutic strategies. As such, to advance therapeutics we have relied on poor surrogates (rodents mostly) of human brain disorders and diseases. The consequences has been that most brain diseases are largely hard to diagnose in their early stages and virtually no effective therapies exist for any of them.
How does human stem cell technology help address the deficiencies of modern brain medicine?
We are able to convert human skin cells into living brain mimics and create "brain disease-in-a dish' models. These mimics faithfully recapitulate brain disease trajectories at the molecular level. The validity of Neurxstem's 'brain disease-in-a dish' models comes from the fact that the molecular data we derive are corroborated by clinical genetic, biochemical and post mortem data. Thus, this technology is a major breakthrough and disruptive in that it will will fundamentally change the way we diagnose and treat brain diseases.
What distinguishes Neurxstem's work form those of others in this stem cell technology space for brain diseases to make it a precision and predictive genomic brain medicine scientific and business leader?
Neurxstem's brain-in-a dish is unique because it has all the major regions of the brain from the retina to the spinal cord. It also has all the major cell times including those of the innate immune system. These features are important to have a reliable 'brain-in-a-dish' model to mimic the disease trajectory of brain diseases that include dysfunction of the innate immune system. Alzheimer's disease is a prime example where we have demonstrated the critical role of the immune system in our proprietary 'AD-in-a dish' model. So not all stem cell models are equivalent or can serve as a proper pre-clinical model for diagnostic and therapeutics applications of brain diseases.
Rene Anand of Neurxstem Inc
Dr. Rene Anand is the Founder and CEO of Neurxstem Inc. (dba NeuRenaisson Inc.), a precision genomic company that has developed human stem cell pre-clinical models of human brain disorders for developing clinical early clinical diagnostics and therapeutics. Dr. Rene Anand has a master degree with training in Chemical/Quantum Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He was mentored for his graduate dissertation research in the Genomics by Dr. Elio Vanin (Postdoctoral Fellow of Dr. Oliver Smithies, Nobel Laureate in Medicine, 2007). He did his postdoctoral training in Neuroscience with Dr. Jon Lindstrom, codiscoverer of the cause of Myasthenia Gravis, at the Salk Institute and at the University of Pennsylvania. He has held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Louisiana State University Neuroscience Center and at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He has served on many national grant review panels from Alzheimer’s Association, National Institute of Health Special Emphasis Panels, Autism Speaks, California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP), American Association for Advancement of Science, to The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and international panels from Brain Canada (Canada), Israel Science Foundation (Israel) to Hong Kong Research Grants Council (China). He has served on the External Advisory Board Member, NERT program, Louisiana Tech, External Advisory Board Member for NINDS Human DNA Repository, Autism Speaks and an External Advisor for faculty promotion at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China). Dr. Anand has earned the Lieber Independent Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Foundation (NARSAD). His research has been funded by NIH, NSF, Autism Speaks, the Bill and Marci Ingram Family Fund. He was awarded a prestigious EUREKA (Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration) NIH grant for high innovation in biomedical research. He has been honored as an Invited Speaker at the Welcome Trust Conference (Hinxton, UK), International Association for Gerontology & Geriatrics (San Francisco), USA), Cholinergic Symposium (Iguazu, Brazil), Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITRaN, UK), Cleveland Clinic Genomic Medicine Institute (USA), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, India) and the Timone Neuroscience Institute (Marseille, France). Contact Rene Anand: rene.anand@gmail.com