Martin Jacko
Founder & Chief Executive Officer Aperture Therapeutics
Dr. Jacko has built and led multiple pharma R&D teams throughout his career, including serving as the first R&D hire at Serotiny (acquired by Johnson & Johnson) and in business development and operations at BridgeBio Pharma, where he led two subsidiaries focused on neurodegeneration and inflammatory disease. He is the inventor of several high-throughput screening platforms that enabled the development of novel tools and therapeutics, and he has also discovered key factors driving neuronal maturation and aging.
His expertise spans business development, corporate strategy, and intellectual property, underpinned by a technical background in genetics, neuroscience, RNA regulation, and immunology. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Genetics at Stanford University, earned a Ph.D. in Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine from Columbia University’s Department of Pathology, and holds an M.Sc. in Genetics from Masaryk University in Brno.
Seminars
- How protective human genetic variants provide a blueprint for discovering genetically validated targets across ALS, FTD, PD, and Alzheimer’s disease
- Exploring the know and unknown roles of innate immune system in progression of age-related neurodegeneration
- Demonstrating therapeutic targeting of CD33 can be employed in several neurodegenerative diseases to rescue pathologic neuroinflammation
- The translational importance of genetically informed targets and biomarker-driven development for advancing next-generation therapies for neurodegeneration
