Yaisa Andrews-Zwilling, PhD

Yaisa Andrews-Zwilling is Senior Director, Research and Program Team Lead at Annexon Biosciences, where the mission is to develop disease-modifying therapeutics for patients suffering from neurological disorders such as Huntington’s disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease by targeting complement-mediated neurodegeneration (CMND).

Her previous work at SanBio Inc., combined breakthrough technology with the scalability of allogeneic bone marrow cells, capable of promoting neural regeneration. With initial clinical trials already demonstrating beneficial results on stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) impairment, this approach has the potential to address profound unmet clinical needs in patients suffering from a wide variety of neurological disease states.

Andrews-Zwilling's research at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, focused on apolipoprotein (apo) E, a protein that is essential for the health and repair of neurons, and more specifically, apoE4, which is the strongest genetic factor involved in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and poor clinical outcome after stroke and TBI.

In 2004, she was nominated as an outstanding young scientist and invited to attend the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, Germany. In 2009, she earned the Alzheimer’s Association Award for Young Scientists and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine postdoctoral fellowship. In 2013, Andrews-Zwilling was awarded the National Award for Young Scientists from the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, and the Ministry of Sciences and Technology, Trinidad & Tobago.