Monrovia, CA -- (SBWire) --06/18/2011 --Susan Abushakra, Vice President of Global Development, Program Lead for Alzheimer’s Disease at Elan Pharmaceuticals will give a featured presentation on “ELND005 (Scyllo-inositol) an Amyloid Anti-aggregation Agent: What We Learned in Phase 2 Studies” at the 5th Neurodegenerative Conditions Research and Development Conference to be held in San Francisco, CA on September 22-23, 2011 by GTC.

ELND005 (Scyllo-inositol) is an endogenous inositol stereoisomer which, unlike Myo-inositol, is not thought to be involved in phopshatidyl-inositol signaling. ELND005 was studied in a Phase 2 dose-ranging randomized placebo controlled study in 353 patients with Mild to Moderate AD. The study included 3 active dose arms and was 78 weeks in duration. In addition to cognitive, functional and behavioral outcomes, the study included v-MRI and CSF biomarker assessments. Drug levels in brain were also assessed using Proton MRS. Susan Abushakra will discuss the clinical, biomarker and imaging outcomes, and also the correlation of the clinical outcomes to biomarker effects.

Susan is currently Vice President of Global Development, and Alzheimer’s Disease Program Team Leader at Elan Pharmaceuticals in South San Francisco. Susan is a board certified neurologist with 11 years of drug development experience in CNS and Pain therapeutic areas, including both early and late stage development of small molecules and biologics. Susan was previously therapeutic area head of Neurology at Eisai Pharmaceuticals and therapeutic area head of Global Regulatory Affairs at Wyeth.

The 5th Neurodegenerative Conditions Research and Development Conference will discuss the latest breakthroughs, new drug targets, new models, the development of new biomarkers, imaging modalities, and several other novel developments and therapeutics to combat neurodegenerative conditions.

The sessions for the conferences are:
Plenary Keynote Session
Session I: Biomarkers: Translation from Discovery to Clinical
Session II: Novel Therapeutic Targets and Approaches in Neurodegenerative Condition
Session III: Stem Cell Therapy in CNS
Session IV: Case Studies in the Preclinical and Clinical Space
Session V: Novel Therapeutic Targets and Approaches in Alzheimer's Disease
Session VI: Protein Misfolding and Aggregation

For more information, please visit http://www.gtcbio.com