Dr. Stephanie McTighe is associate director of pharmacology at Arkuda Therapeutics. She received her PhD in neuroscience from Cambridge University, UK, and conducted postdoctoral training at Pfizer’s Neuroscience Research Unit in the US. She has over 10 years of experience leading programs and pharmacology efforts in both small biotech and large pharma. Dr. McTighe has worked on drug discovery programs in many areas of neuroscience, including neurodegeneration, epilepsy, psychiatry and neurodevelopmental disorders. Her focus is on bringing forward safe, efficacious molecules for which biomarkers are available for testing new therapeutic mechanisms in the clinic.

Arkuda’s small molecules have been shown to increase progranulin secretion and GCase activity in cellular models. Dr. McTighe’s current research is focused on evaluating these small molecules in preclinical models of Parkinson’s disease, and conducting pre-clinical biomarker discovery to enable a clinical trial.