ASPET is pleased to award Dr. Katerina Akassoglou, PhD from the University of California, San Francisco, the 2024 Pharmacia-ASPET Award for Experimental Therapeutics. This award recognizes outstanding research in pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, basic laboratory or clinical research that has had, or potentially will have, a major impact on the pharmacological treatment of disease.

Dr. Akassoglou is receiving this award in recognition of her work on neurovascular and neuroimmune mechanisms that will have a major impact on the treatment of neurological diseases.

Dr. Katerina Akassoglou has pioneered studies on neurovascular regulation of inflammation and tissue repair and the molecular interface blood proteins utilize to interact with nervous system cells. She developed a first-in-class fibrin-targeting immunotherapy, currently in Phase 1, for the treatment of neurological diseases. She has published over 100 papers and is an inventor on 11 issued and several pending patents. She was awarded by the White House the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology, the Dana Foundation and Marilyn Hilton Awards, the Barancik and ISFP Prizes and she was named by the San Francisco Business Times among the 2021 Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business. She is a Fellow of the American Neurological Association, an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and ASPET. She has been a member of ASPET since 2005.

Katerina Akassoglou, PhD received the 2022 ISFP Prize “for outstanding contributions to the field of fibrinolysis and proteolysis” at the 3rd Joint Meeting of the International Society for Fibrinolysis & Proteolysis and the Plasminogen Activation Workshop, held at Caen, France in September, where she delivered the ISFP Prize lecture. Dr. Akassoglou is the first woman to receive the award since its inauguration in 1974.

Katerina Akassoglou, PhD, has been elected into the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a lifetime distinction by the world’s largest general scientific society.

“I’m grateful to my lab members and collaborators for their immeasurable contributions to these studies over the past 20 years. Election to AAAS further encourages us to follow our curiosity about how brain diseases start and progress and we look forward to new discoveries contributing to the advancement of science.”

Dr. Katerina Akassoglou, named one of the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business. To view the full article, click here.

Dr. Petersen has not only been promoted to Associate Professor at the Department of Pediatrics at UCSF; he is also the recipient of the UCSF New Frontier Research pilot award to expand his studies on ACVR1 in neurological diseases.

The New Frontier Research (NFR) is part of the UCSF Sandler Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research designed to further biomedical discoveries, encourage new areas of exploration , and support emerging talent.