Dr. Daniel Tardiff is a scientific co-founder and vice president, head of translational research at Yumanity Therapeutics. After earning his PhD at Brandeis University studying RNA metabolism, he conducted postdoctoral research with Dr. Susan Lindquist at the Whitehead Institute/MIT, where he used yeast models of toxic protein aggregation to discover new potential therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative diseases. Work in the Lindquist lab helped establish a drug discovery platform for neurodegenerative diseases that provided the foundation for Yumanity Therapeutics. Dr. Tardiff has worked across the drug discovery process, from screening, target identification, target validation, pharmacology, preclinical safety and clinical biomarker development. He co-led the drug discovery program that identified a clinical-stage inhibitor of stearoyl-CoA desaturase in development for Parkinson’s disease (PD). Dr. Tardiff’s translational team is exploring multiple neurodegenerative diseases, from PD to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and is responsible for target validation, preclinical development and translational clinical biomarkers.