Management Team
Dr. Tolar serves as Founder, President & CEO of Alzheon. Prior to founding Alzheon in June 2013, Dr. Tolar held executive positions in several life sciences companies, where he has successfully established and grew new companies, business areas and product opportunities. Dr. Tolar served as President & CEO of Knome, Inc., where he led the development of human genome interpretation systems and services for academic, pharmaceutical and clinical clients, as President & CEO at NormOxys, Inc., where he built the business for novel cancer therapeutics, and as Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Business Officer at CoMentis, Inc., where he developed the first clinical-stage beta secretase inhibitor platform for Alzheimer’s disease and negotiated a collaboration with a potential value of $1.1 billion with Astellas Pharma in 2008. Dr. Tolar held a variety of clinical development and business leadership positions at Pfizer, where he was instrumental in a wide range of business transactions, including acquisition of Rinat Neuroscience for $500 million in 2006, and directed programs through all stages of clinical development and FDA approval including NDA filings.
During his academic career, Dr. Tolar served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Yale University School of Medicine, where he focused on movement disorders. Dr. Tolar trained in Neurology at the Boston Medical Center, received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience for his work on the role of apolipoprotein E in pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, and published many scientific publications in the areas of neuroscience and neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Tolar received his M.D. from Charles University in Prague, where, as a medical student, he helped organize and lead the Velvet Revolution that toppled the communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia in November 1989.
In 2021, Dr. Tolar founded the International Neurodegenerative Disorders Research Center, INDRC, a global institute applying artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to identify and validate therapeutic interventions for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. He serves as the Chairman of the INDRC Executive Board. Dr. Tolar also serves on business and scientific boards including the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, the Alzheimer Foundation, the CERGE-EI Foundation, and Advance Healthcare Management Institute.
In 2024, Dr. Tolar received the Eliška and Zdeněk Strmiska Award from the Alzheimer’s Foundation for significant contribution towards the research and treatment of Alzheimer´s disease and donated the cash prize to the INDRC institute. In 2021, Dr. Tolar received the Czech Laurels Award from the Czech Chamber of Commerce in recognition of his leadership in Alzheimer disease therapeutics, as well as clinical, scientific, and business projects in the Czech Republic. The Czech Chamber of Commerce is the largest and the most representative business association in the Czech Republic. Dr. Tolar was recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the world of drug development and manufacture by The Medicine Maker Magazine’s Power Lists for 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
We believe that Dr. Tolar is qualified to serve on our board of directors because of his scientific expertise and extensive experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
Dr. Hey brings to Alzheon more than 20 years of drug discovery and development experience in both biotechnology and pharmaceutical drug development. He has held senior leadership positions in drug development at several biotechnology companies including CoMentis and NormOxys, focusing on Alzheimer’s disease and oncology, respectively. As Senior Vice President of Discovery and Preclinical Drug Development at CoMentis, Dr. Hey served as the pivotal senior leader and drug development officer responsible for the beta secretase inhibitor drug development program for Alzheimer’s disease. In this role, he built a drug discovery and drug development team optimization facility, and led a team of over 25 scientists responsible for all key aspects of early drug development, including: PK/PD, biochemistry, in vitro and in vivo pharmacology, in vitro and in vivo ADME, bioanalytical, preclinical safety, safety pharmacology, translational medicine, medicinal chemistry and early clinical development. This work culminated in the first clinically tested beta secretase candidate, as well as a collaboration with a potential value of $1.1 billion with Astellas Pharma in 2008.
Prior to his tenure at CoMentis, Dr. Hey spent 18 years at the Schering-Plough Research Institute leading discovery, preclinical and early clinical development teams in multiple therapeutic areas through Phase 2 development. During this time, he was also a divisional leader, managing preclinical discovery, lead optimization, early development activities, and strategic planning for over 50 scientists. Dr. Hey has developed new chemical entities (NCEs) in multiple therapeutic areas, and has been directly responsible for discovery and development of over 20 NCEs, including several that have advanced to NDA stage and approval. Dr. Hey also had additional direct experience supporting Phase 3 and Phase 4 programs for Schering-Plough’s respiratory disease franchise portfolio, including Claritin®/Clarinex®, Asmanex® and Nasonex®.
Dr. Hey holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and has authored more than 145 peer reviewed scientific publications.
Dr. Abushakra brings over 20 years of neurological drug development expertise to Alzheon, with extensive clinical and regulatory experience in Alzheimer’s disease drug development. Dr. Abushakra was also a co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Bonti, Inc., a biotechnology company, where she served from September 2015 until its acquisition by Allergan in late 2018.
Prior to Alzheon, Dr. Abushakra was the Chief Medical Officer at Transition Therapeutics, and prior to that at Elan/Perrigo, where she led the development of ELND005, an amyloid targeting oral agent that was in development for neuropsychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease and Down syndrome. Previously, Dr. Abushakra was Vice President of Clinical Development at Elan Corporation and Allergan, where she led several early and late-stage central nervous system and pain clinical programs, including supplemental biologics license application (sBLA) filings for Botox® in spasticity and migraine. As the Therapeutic Area Head at Eisai in clinical development and at Wyeth in regulatory affairs, her experience includes investigational new drug (IND) filings for novel Alzheimer’s disease candidates, as well as supplemental new drug applications (sNDAs) for Aricept® indications and for an epilepsy drug Banzel®.
Dr. Abushakra was a voting member of the Alzheimer’s Association Research Roundtable (AARR) for 10 years and has been a member of many industry working groups including the Alzheimer’s Disease EU/US Task Force, and the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN).
Dr. Abushakra is a board-certified neurologist, having completed her residency and neuromuscular/neurophysiology specialty training at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, in Baltimore, Maryland. She received her M.D. with distinction from the American University of Beirut Medical School, Lebanon.
Dr. Power brings over 25 years of drug development experience to Alzheon. From June 2015 through December 2020 he served as our Vice President of Program and Portfolio. Previously, Dr. Power was Vice President and Head of PharmaTherapeutics Precision Medicine at Pfizer Global Research and Development in New London, CT, where he led a diverse group providing genomics, genetics and imaging expertise to projects across Cardiovascular, Neurosciences and Pain therapeutic areas, supporting novel target identification, biomarker development and precision medicine strategies for early stage clinical programs. Dr. Power led major external partnerships at Pfizer including the Yale/Pfizer Bioimaging Alliance and Pfizer/NIH/NCATS’ New Therapeutic Uses Initiative. His group developed and delivered collaborations with major academic institutions including the University of Cambridge, the Karolinska Institutet, University College London, and Washington University in St. Louis. During more than 20 years at Pfizer in both the UK and US, Dr. Power developed and led the implementation of strategic organizational changes for technology groups.
Dr. Power’s groups have been at the forefront of pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine, establishing the first large scale automated biobank in the pharmaceutical industry and developing integrated DNA sample collection from clinical trials and conducting large scale pharmacogenetics studies. He was a founding board member of the International Serious Adverse Event Consortium and served on the board of the Personalized Medicine Coalition. Earlier in his career Dr. Power was responsible for running Phase 3 studies in Europe for the Geodon® schizophrenia program.
Dr. Power earned his medical degree MB, BCh, BAO from University College Cork, Ireland, and an MSc in the History of Science and Medicine from University College London. He is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Mr. Ken Mace brings to Alzheon more than 20 years of senior finance and operations leadership in leading, building and advising biopharmaceutical companies; with extensive experience with developing business plans, financing strategies and financial modeling. Previously, Mr. Mace served as the Vice President of Finance, New Ventures at Flagship Pioneering, a venture capital firm that creates and grows first-in-category life science companies, where he supported 20+ new venture entities. Before Flagship Pioneering, Mr. Mace was Vice Director and Senior Project Manager, Group Planning and Special Projects, with F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., where he provided financial analysis in support of long-range business planning. Earlier, Mr. Mace was Vice President of Finance and Global Operations at mtm laboratories AG, an in-vitro diagnostics company. In this role, he was responsible for finance and sales operations and was the finance lead for the $230 million acquisition by Roche Diagnostics. Mr. Mace also held positions of increasing responsibility with life science companies ViaCell, Inc., Cytyc Corporation and Boston Scientific Corporation.
Mr. Mace earned his MBA from Babson College and BS in Accounting and Finance from Roger Williams University.
Mr. Pauly brings more than 20 years of commercial launch experience in the biopharma industry to the Alzheon team. He has extensive experience with disease-modifying agents in multiple therapeutic areas and across multiple commercial functions including sales, account management and market access. Most recently, Mr. Pauly was a Division General Manager and Vice President for Alzheimer’s Disease at Biogen with responsibility for commercialization of Aduhelm® in the West Division of the U.S.
Previously, Mr. Pauly has held commercial and executive roles at Johnson & Johnson, Genentech, and AstraZeneca, where he supported successful launches and commercialization for multiple products including Remicade®, Actemra®, Xolair® and Fasenra®.
Mr. Pauly received his Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Loras College located in Dubuque, Iowa.
Mr. Adem Albayrak brings to Alzheon over a decade-long career in precision medicine and clinical research across industry and academia. Most recently, Mr. Albayrak was the Senior Vice President for Technology in Health Catalyst’s Life Sciences Business, tying together data, analytics, and product development to drive innovations through the use of real-world data towards retrospective studies, real-time monitoring of COVID-19 in collaboration with the FDA and other organizations, and identifying sites and patients to optimize clinical trial recruitment. Prior to Health Catalyst, he oversaw the genomics data pipeline at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute that enabled clinical research and translational medicine; supported researchers in bioinformatics and analytics projects; and led product management for the enterprise that included software for IRB-approved research data delivery, clinical trial matching, and real world data curation. Previously, Mr. Albayrak led product management at BIOBASE, where he launched a pharmacogenomics data product, which was acquired by Qiagen. Additionally, Mr. Albayrak spearheaded software product development at Knome, where he built and supported products in variant and gene pathway analysis.
Mr. Albayrak served as a Sergeant in the reserves of the United States Marine Corps. He earned his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science with a bioinformatics focus from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, with graduate work in data visualization of genomics data, and Certificate of Management Excellence from Harvard Business School.
Ms. Flint brings more than 30 years of experience across the pharmaceutical industry, covering the US, EU and Canada; with a focus on drug development, clinical operations, and regulatory affairs. She has experience in project management and quality procedures for clinical research. Ms. Flint has managed more than 75 clinical studies, including over 20 Phase 3 clinical trials.
She has led clinical operations at increasing levels of responsibility in companies such as Wilson Therapeutics AB, filing over 20 INDs and over 10 NDAs/MAAs throughout her career. Her expertise ranges from pre-IND to commercial stage drug development, with a focus in neurological, rare, and orphan diseases, and she has filed over 15 510(k)s, 3 PMAs, and 4 ODAs.
Ms. Flint received her Bachelor of Science in Biology at Bridgewater State College and her Master of Sciences in Pharmacology at Northeastern University.
Dr. Earvin Liang is a clinical pharmacology and clinical development expert in CNS, with a specialty in Alzheimer’s disease, neuropsychiatric, and neurodegenerative indications. Dr. Liang brings over 20 years of industry experience ranging from pre-clinical drug identification and optimization, clinical pharmacology programs, Phase 2 studies, to late stage global clinical trials. Dr. Liang has extensive clinical experience in passive and active amyloid immunotherapy for Alzheimer’s disease, cognition in Down syndrome, neuropsychiatric indications in dementia, Parkinson’s disease and dementia-related psychosis, as well as several early stage programs with gamma secretase inhibitors.
Dr. Liang was most recently an independent clinical pharmacology and development consultant to several biotechnology companies. Prior to that, he spent 8 years as a key member supporting clinical development of bapineuzumab (anti-amyloid antibody), ACC-001 (amyloid vaccine), ELND005 (amyloid anti-oligomer agent), and multiple sclerosis immune-modulation programs at Elan Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy, and Transition Therapeutics.
Dr. Liang holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Florida and BS in Pharmacy from Taipei Medical University. He is a licensed pharmacist and has authored more than 50 peer reviewed papers and abstracts, and given over 130 oral and poster presentations at international conferences and symposia.
Jean Schaefer joined Alzheon in 2021 and brings 30+ years of industry experience ranging from drug discovery through post-marketing activities. As a drug target scientist turned project manager, Jean has experience in a wide array of pharmaceutical disciplines.
Jean started her career at Bayer and then joined Pfizer where she was co-inventor on 3 patents and published 5 papers. In addition, Jean consulted to the pharmaceutical industry for 10 years before joining the Alzheon team. Jean’s consulting engagements included billion-dollar global acquisition projects, FDA inspection response, supply chain operations, data management, and business transformation.
Jean received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology from Eastern Connecticut State University and a Master of Science in Biology from Southern Connecticut State University. A lifelong learner, Jean has completed certificate programs at MIT and Smith in Entrepreneurship and Bioscience Leadership and is a current member of Regulatory Affairs Professional Society.
Dr. Kesslak has over 18 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry with a focus on central nervous system disorders in neurology and psychiatry. As a program lead and major contributor, he has been involved in several INDs, BLAs, sBLAs, and NDAs that include advancing programs for the treatment of behavioral disorders in Alzheimer’s (AD) and Parkinson’s disease, and approvals for the use of botulinum toxin for the treatment of spasticity. During his career, he has held positions at increasing levels of responsibility at Amgen, Allergan, Elan, Acadia, and most recently at Revance Therapeutics as Senior Director of Clinical Development and Director of Scientific Communication in Medical Affairs. His industry experience ranges from Phase 1 studies to Phase 3 and post marketing.
Before joining industry, Dr. Kesslak was on faculty at the University of California, Irvine, where he completed training and became a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and aging. As an original member of the Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia (now Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders), Dr. Kesslak was responsible for early studies on AD olfaction, brain imaging (PET and MRI), and clinical trials. His basic research focused on neural plasticity and behavior with early work in neural transplantation, animal models for aging and dementia, and activity induced neural plasticity.
Dr. Kesslak received his PhD in Psychology from Texas Christian University with a background in neuroscience, experimental and clinical neuropsychology.
Mr. de Naurois brings to Alzheon more than 15 years of corporate strategy and financial planning experience. He has delivered strategic initiatives, such as new product developments and launches, business acquisitions, divestitures, and operational turnarounds.
Mr. de Naurois has worked in leadership roles at increasing levels of responsibility in companies across the life sciences and pharmaceutical sector, most recently acting as Senior Director of Financial Planning & Analysis at Flagship Pioneering, a company known for creating and incubating its own life sciences companies, one of the most notable being Moderna. At Flagship, he led the implementation of systems to scale operations of the early-stage companies incubation engine, and carved-out and migrated financial functions of 7 spin-out companies.
Mr. de Naurois holds degrees from Paris Nanterre University and Cranfield University, is an alumni of the Institute of Agricultural Engineers, a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, and a member of the Institute of Directors in the United Kingdom.
Ms. Lynch brings over 25 years of biopharma industry experience to Alzheon, with extensive expertise in building and managing market access functions. Ms. Lynch joined Alzheon from Nabriva Therapeutics where she held dual roles as Vice President of Sales & Managed Care. Previously, she served in Vice President of Market Access roles at Otonomy and Optimer. In her role at Alzheon, Ms. Lynch will be responsible for developing and implementing strategies for commercial channel distribution, payor coverage, affordability programs, patient services programs, pricing, and patient advocacy.
Ms. Lynch earned her BA in Business Administration and Management from Augustana College and her MBA from North Central College.
Mr. Greene brings 25 years of experience in the biopharma industry with the vast majority in central nervous system (CNS) diseases. He brings extensive experience in marketing, sales and access leadership as well as experience in commercial strategy, operations, business development and alliance management. Previously, Mr. Greene has held commercial and executive roles at Janssen, Otsuka, and Biogen with over a dozen launches in CNS and Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Greene has a passion for mental health and rallying diverse teams around big ideas.
Mr. Greene received a Bachelor of Arts from Providence College.