Frank S. Menniti

Dr. Menniti has over 25 years of successful drug discovery and development experience. Most recently, Dr. Menniti co-founded Mnemosyne Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and served as Chief Science Officer (2010-2015). He is the architect of the Mnemosyne’s therapeutic platform, the Subunit-selective NMDA Receptor Modulators, which yielded a partnership with Novartis to develop a new class of antidepressant.

In conjunction with his responsibilities as Chief Science Officer of MindImmune Therapeutics, Inc., Dr. Menniti is a Ryan Research Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Rhode Island.

Prior to co-founding Mnemosyne, Dr. Menniti was a Research Fellow in the CNS Discovery group at Pfizer, Inc. (1992-2009). While at Pfizer Inc., Dr. Menniti was a principal in developing the scientific rationale for use of NMDA receptor NR2B antagonists for stroke, neuropathic pain, Parkinson’s disease, and depression and in the clinical development of the prototype NR2B antagonist CP-101,606.

Dr. Menniti also was involved in developing the therapeutic utilities of phosphodiesterase inhibitors for neuropsychiatric disease. This includes the identification of PDE10A inhibitors for schizophrenia and Huntington’s disease, with the first PDE10A inhibitor to reach Phase II development.

Dr. Menniti also led the discovery teams that advanced the first PDE9A inhibitor into Phase II testing for Alzheimer’s disease and the first PDE5A inhibitor into Phase II testing to improve functional recovery after stroke.

Dr. Menniti received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1987 and was a Staff Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. James W. Putney at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences from 1988-1992, participating in research elucidating the fundamentals of intracellular calcium signaling.