In addition to his role at NeuroPhage Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company developing drugs targeting aggregates of misfolded proteins, Franz F. Hefti, PhD, serves as advisor to several biotech companies developing therapeutics for neurological diseases. Prior to joining NeuroPhage, he was chief scientific officer at Avid Radiopharmaceuticals Inc., a company that developed imaging diagnostics and which was acquired in 2010 by Lilly. He also was executive vice president of drug development at Rinat Neuroscience, a company with antibody programs for pain and neurological indications that 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 and Europe.

Before engaging in 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. He published over 250 papers on neurotrophic factors and topics in neuropharmacology.

Dr. Hefti received his PhD from the University of Zurich and did his postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prior to Genentech, he spent more than a decade in academia as a Professor at the University of Southern California and Associate Professor at the University of Miami, where he carried out seminal research on therapeutic applications of neurotrophic factors.

Dr. Hefti has published over 250 papers on neurotrophic factors and topics in neuropharmacology, as well as the textbook Drug Discovery for Nervous System Diseases. He received his PhD from the University of Zurich and completed postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Max Planck Institute in Munich.