Margaret M. Zaleska

Margaret M. Zaleska, Ph.D. is a consultant offering NTS expertise in bench-to-clinic translational strategies and in vivo models of central nervous system injury. She has more than 20 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, developing compounds for neurological indications at Wyeth and Pfizer, and has led numerous drug discovery programs for small molecules and biologics from target inception and drug candidate validation to clinical development. Most recently, as a Portfolio Lead in Pfizer’s Neuroscience Unit, she led an alliance with the CHDI Foundation for the development of a PDE10 inhibitor successfully advanced into Phase 2 clinical development. While at Wyeth, she successfully led five project teams to deliver diverse drug candidates for the treatment of stroke from discovery to clinical development. Margaret is a standing member of the Neurological Sciences and Disorders Study Section Committee and the NINDS Special Emphasis Panel Scientific Review Group. She is also a member of the Michael J. Fox Foundation Therapeutic Pipeline Projects’ Review Board. Early in her career, she held a research faculty position in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She received her M.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Warsaw, Poland, and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Polish Academy of Sciences.