About

Dr. Alan Breier is Karuna’s Chief Clinical Advisor and Chair of it’s Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Breier previously was the Chief Medical Officer at Eli Lilly and is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Vice Chair for Clinical Research at Indiana University School of Medicine and Chief of the Psychotic Disorders Program. He was a member of Lilly Research Laboratories’ policy committee and the company’s senior management council. Previously, Dr. Breier was a clinical research fellow at Eli Lilly, product team leader for the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa and Vice President of Pharmaceutical Products at Eli Lilly. Prior to joining Eli Lilly, Dr. Breier was Chief of the Section of Clinical Studies at the NIMH Intramural Research Program and prior to that the Chief of the Outpatient Research Program at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.

Dr. Breier received a bachelor’s degree from University of Toledo and an M.D. from the University of Cincinatti. He has published over 250 scientific articles and is the recipient of several awards.

Dr. Harrigan is a non-executive director of the Karuna Therapeutics Board. He previously served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Safety and Regulatory for Pfizer Inc. from 2012 to 2015, where he led a 3,500-person team in 80 countries that was responsible for collecting, interpreting and reporting clinical safety data for more than 600 marketed products, and managing regulatory interactions with global health agencies. Dr. Harrigan’s previous executive leadership roles at Pfizer include serving as Senior Vice President, Head of Worldwide Business Development, Senior Vice President, Head of Worldwide Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance, and Vice President, Head of Neuroscience and Ophthalmology. Earlier in his career at Pfizer, Dr. Harrigan served as Vice President of Clinical Development, Therapeutic Area Head, CNS and Pain.

Before entering the pharmaceutical industry in 1990, Dr. Harrigan was a practicing neurologist for seven years. He currently serves on the boards of directors of Acadia, Incyte and PhaseBIO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Dr. Harrigan earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from St. Anselm College and holds an M.D. from the University of Massachusetts.

Dr. Keefe’s research is primarily devoted to understanding cognitive dysfunction and its treatment in patients with psychiatric and neurological conditions. He has had a leadership role for cognitive methods in several large National Institute of Mental Health studies, including the CATIE, MATRICS, TURNS, CRSTN and TENETS projects. He has published more than 250 scientific papers and two books. Dr. Keefe is on the editorial boards of Psychological Medicine, Schizophrenia Research, Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, and Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience. He was the 2012-2014 President of the International Society for CNS Clinical Trials and Methodology. He is on the Board of Directors for the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS) and the Scientific Board of the Brain and Behavioral Research Foundation. He is the CEO and co-Founder of VeraSci.

Dr. Levey is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology at Emory University. Dr. Levey has secondary faculty appointments in the Departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He is also Executive Associate Dean for Research at the School of Medicine and Director of the Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Emory.

Dr. Levey is a neurologist and neuroscientist internationally recognized for his work in neurodegenerative disease, with more than 400 research publications.  His work in Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative disorders has contributed to understanding mechanisms involved in these conditions and translation to new therapeutic strategies and biomarkers. He also made pioneering discoveries of the anatomy and molecular pharmacology of cholinergic systems in brain. He has received numerous awards and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Levey received a bachelor’s degree from University of Michigan and an M.D. and Ph.D. (Immunology) from the University of Chicago. He then trained in Neurology at Johns Hopkins University, and joined their faculty prior to moving to Emory in 1991. 

Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D., is the Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons; Director, New York State Psychiatric Institute; and Psychiatrist-in-Chief of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital – Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Lieberman’s work has advanced the understanding of the pathophysiology and treatment of schizophrenia.

He is the recipient of many national and international honors and awards, including the Lieber Prize for Schizophrenia Research from the National Association for Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders, the Adolph Meyer Award from the American Psychiatric Association, the Research Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the Neuroscience Award from the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

He is a member of numerous scientific organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine and served as President of the American Psychiatric Association from 2012 to May 2014. He has authored more than 600 papers and articles published in the scientific literature and written and/or edited ten books on mental illness, psychopharmacology and psychiatry including the critically acclaimed Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry (Little Brown 2015).

Dr. Pande is a physician who qualified in medicine, and specialized in psychiatry, at the University of Lucknow in India. He obtained additional specialty training at Western University in Canada, and subsequently served on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School. Over nearly thirty years of his academic and industry career, Dr. Pande has been involved in the development of important central nervous system drugs while holding various senior roles in GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert, and Lilly Research Laboratories. His experience includes drug development, registration, launch and lifecycle management in the areas of anxiety, depression, epilepsy, neuropathic pain, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, and Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and others.

Dr. Pande currently serves as Senior Advisor to PureTech Health; non-executive director of Autifony Therapeutics; lead independent director of Axovant Gene Therapies (NASDAQ:AXGT); scientific advisory to Cennerv Pharma; development consultant to various companies; and as President and CEO of Verity BioConsulting. Dr. Pande is a fellow of several professional societies, including the American Psychiatric Association. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and over 100 abstracts, book chapters, and book reviews.

Bill Potter earned his B.A., M.S., M.D., and Ph.D. at Indiana University, after which he functioned in positions of increasing responsibility and seniority over the next 25 years at the National Institutes of Health with a research focus on translational neuroscience. While at the NIH, Bill was widely published and appointed to many societies, committees and boards; these roles enabled him to develop a wide reputation as an expert in psychopharmacological sciences and championing the development of novel treatments for CNS disorders.

Dr. Potter left the NIH in 1996 to accept a position as Executive Director for early clinical neuroscience at Lilly Research Labs, and in 2004 he joined Merck Research Labs (MRL) as Vice President of Clinical Neuroscience, then moved to the newly created position of Translational Neuroscience in 2006, a position from which he retired in January of 2011. His experience at Lilly and MRL in identifying, expanding and developing methods of evaluating CNS effects of compounds in human brain cover state-of-the-art approaches across multiple modalities. These include brain imaging and cerebrospinal fluid proteomics as well as development of more sensitive clinical measures. Dr. Potter continues as an Emeritus co-chair of the Neuroscience Steering Committee of the FNIH and serves in an advisory capacity to stakeholder organizations in brain diseases where he champions the position that more disciplined hypothesis testing of targets in humans through public/private partnerships is the best near-term approach to moving CNS drug development forward for important neurologic and psychiatric illnesses.

Anantha Shekhar, MD, PhD, is senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a nationally recognized educator, researcher, and entrepreneur with major contributions in medicine and life sciences.

At Pitt, Dr. Shekhar leads all six health sciences schools that, for more than a century, have been educational and research leaders in their respective fields, propelling scientific discovery and clinical innovation that advance human health. Education at the Schools of the Health Sciences—Dental Medicine, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Public Health—emphasizes interdisciplinary instruction and leadership that incorporates the most advanced techniques and technologies to prepare future researchers, physicians, and health care providers and administrators for careers of leadership and service.   Dr. Shekhar’s responsibilities at the University of Pittsburgh include shaping the careers of more than 6,000 faculty and staff members, as well as the academic success of approximately 5,000 students annually, all while supporting Pitt’s position as a top-ranked recipient of NIH research dollars. He also works closely with UPMC, one of the largest academic medical centers in the nation, to ensure that health care delivery, biomedical research, and education—already among the nation’s elite—continue to flourish.

Dr. Shekhar’s areas of expertise include basic and clinical research on the effects of stress, stress-induced psychiatric and medical conditions, and clinical psychopharmacology. His laboratory has developed some of the best translational models for panic and related anxiety disorders. His work focuses on the role of brain abnormalities that could lead to stress and psychiatric disorders and to the discovery of new treatments. He has directed phase I and phase II studies in healthy and diseased populations and biomarker studies using physiological and brain imaging methods.  Dr. Shekhar has also initiated several Investigational New Drug applications; and he has conducted many pharmacokinetic, pharmacogenetic, and phase III studies of novel compounds in the treatment of anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorders.  A number of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), private foundations, and commercial collaborations have supported his research. A brief sampling of Dr. Shekhar’s many leadership and career accomplishments, before arriving at the University of Pittsburgh, include:

• Cofounded or led five biotech companies, including Anagin, Gate Neurosciences, and Vasculonics that are developing treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, neuropathic pain, depression, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.
• Demonstrated a new muscarinic receptor approach to treating schizophrenia—a novel mechanism of action that is under development by Karuna Therapeutics.
• Formed two commercial incubators—one for therapeutics and another for medical devices—at Indiana University hosting more than 15 companies in various stages of commercialization.
• Served as founding director of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI)—a statewide institute within IUSM supported by an NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) grant—which was established in 2008. The partnership includes Indiana, Purdue, and Notre Dame Universities. Dr. Shekhar, in conjunction with being director of the Indiana University Precision Health Initiative, focused on transforming biomedical research, health care innovations, and the delivery of health interventions to enhance the prevention, treatment, and health outcomes of human diseases through a more precise analysis of the genetic, developmental, behavioral, and environmental factors that shape an individual’s health.

He currently serves as a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation.

Dr. Tamminga holds the Lou and Ellen McGinley Distinguished Chair and the McKenzie Chair in Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and is the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and the Chief of the Translational Neuroscience Division in Schizophrenia at UT Southwestern. She received her M.D. from Vanderbilt University and completed residency training in psychiatry at the University of Chicago. She served on the University of Chicago faculty from 1975 to 1979 and moved to the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke for training in Neurology in 1978. After joining the faculty at the University of Maryland Medical School in 1979, she practiced research, clinical care and teaching there until joining the faculty at UT Southwestern Medical School in 2003.

Dr. Tamminga has been a member of NIMH’s National Advisory Board and has served on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Drug Abuse, as Council member and President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, as a Member and Chair of the Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee of the FDA, as well as consultant for the Orphan Products Development Review Group, FDA. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Brain and Behavioral Research Foundation (NARSAD). She has been a Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry and on the editorial board of several other journals in the field. Dr. Tamminga was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences in 1998 and has served on several IOM committees in that capacity.