David Leppert

David graduated with an MD from the University of Zurich Medical Faculty, where he also completed his specialty training in neurology. He completed research fellowships in neuroimmunology and neurophysiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and founded the Clinical Neuro-immunology Laboratory at the University Hospital Basel in 1995, serving in parallel as head of the epilepsy outpatient clinic from 1999 to 2004. He received the 2nd Hoechst-Marion-Roussel prize for MS research (1999), the Ellermann Prize of the Swiss Neurological Society (2001), and the Baasch-Medicus Award (2002) for his research on the role of matrix metalloproteinases and genomics in MS. He began his industry career in 2004 at GlaxoSmithKline in translational medicine and later at in GE Healthcare for diagnostic drug development. He was then Senior Medical Consultant at Novartis and Global Project Medical Director for the Siponimod MS program, before joining Roche as Global Development Team Leader of ocrelizumab, later becoming Therapeutic Area Head Neuroinflammation. He returned to Novartis in 2015 as Therapeutic Area Head Neuroinflammation, where he was responsible for early and late stage development of MS compounds. Most recently, he was Senior Research Associate at the University of Basel, focusing on research on neurofilaments and other biomarkers of neurological diseases. David has authored over 100 peer reviewed publications.