BoRDELon, MD, PHD

Clinical Professor

Department of Neurology

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Dr. Yvette Bordelon’s clinical work involves the diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and other movement disorders. Her clinical research interests include the development of biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases and conducting clinical trials in movement disorders. She performed her thesis work with former Scientific Advisory Board member Dr. Marie-Françoise Chesselet, investigating mechanisms of cell death in an animal model of HD. As a member of the HDF’s Venezuela Project, she gained clinical experience performing numerous neurological exams.

BEvERLy L. DAvIDSon, PHD

Katherine A. High Chair in Cell and Gene Therapy

Director, Raymond G. Perelman Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics

Chief Scientific Strategy Officer, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

University of Pennsylvania

American Academy of Arts Sciences

National Academy of Medicine

Dr. Beverly Davidson’s laboratory focuses on genetic diseases that affect the brain, investigating how mutant gene products contribute to disease, and why certain brain regions are more susceptible than others. Her team employs advanced molecular methods, sequencing and imaging in animal models, and a variety of molecular tools to test various hypotheses. Her lab is also developing next generation therapeutics for inherited disorders, including the engineering of novel gene therapy vector capsids and cargo to approach tissue and cell type specific treatments.

Recent honors include the 2023 National Ataxia Foundation’s Dr. John W. Schut Research Achievement Award. She is immediate past president of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, the largest international association of gene and cell therapy research. Dr. Davidson received the HDF’s Leslie Gehry Brenner Prize for Innovation in Science in 2015.

STEvEn FInkBEInER, MD, PHD

Director, Center for Systems and Therapeutics

Director, Taube/Koret Center for Neurodegenerative Disease

Gladstone Institutes

Professor, Departments of Neurology and Physiology

University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Steven Finkbeiner is interested in understanding mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease and developing therapeutic strategies and therapies. He has studied HD since 1998, inventing and applying innovative methods and tools, including robotic microscopy, stem cells and artificial intelligence. His landmark study in 2004 in Nature changed the way the field thought about the hallmark pathology in Huntington’s disease, the most cited paper in neuroscience for the decade. With philanthropists in the San Francisco Bay Area, he established the Taube-Koret Center, which works to translate the most promising discoveries from the labs into therapeutics, often in partnership with drug companies. His most promising HD therapeutic strategy stimulates a pathway in cells that helps clear the abnormal Huntingtin protein. Dr. Finkbeiner received the HDF’s Leslie Gehry Prize for Innovation in Science in 2022.

Steven Finkbeiner, MD, PhD Gladstone Institutes

University of California, San Francisco