Founder and Chief Executive Officer : Santosh R. D'Mello

After completing his PhD in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh and postdoctoral training first at the Boston University Medical Center and then at the Istituto di Neurobiologia, CNR, in Rome, Dr. DMello joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut in 1993. In 1998 he moved to the University of Texas at Dallas where he rose to the rank of Full Professor. Dr. D’Mello joined Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 2014 as Professor and Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, where he remained until 2019. Research in Dr. D’Mello’s laboratory has focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating neurodegeneration, with the long-term goal of identifying molecules that can be targeted in the development of effecting treatment strategies for progressive and fatal neurodegenerative diseases. Complementing these mechanistic studies, Dr. D’Mello’s laboratory pursued a drug discovery effort aimed at identifying small-molecule neuroprotective compounds. A recent area of research is to understand the mechanisms underlying brain development through the analyses of mice with neurodevelopmental defects. Dr. D’Mello’s research has continuously funded by federal grants for the past 25 years, obtaining over $14 million in research grants. He is currently on the editorial board of three scientific journals. Dr. D’Mello has served on study sections for the NIH, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and has been a reviewer for many other national and private foundations and organizations funding research. He has organized conferences on therapeutic approaches for neurodegenerative diseases at which scientists from academia, industry and government participated.

Dr. D’Mello brings 25 years of experience and expertise of mechanistic and drug discovery research to Neugeneron with the goal of developing small molecule kinase inhibitors to prevent neuronal loss in neurodegenerative diseases and to block excessive survival and proliferation of glioblastoma cells.