Chief Scientific Officer

Herma joined Khondrion as a scientist in 2016. She is responsible for overseeing Khondrion’s broad preclinical development strategy and for managing the day-to-day operations of the company’s laboratories. Herma is a specialist in medical biology with extensive experience in mitochondrial biochemistry having previously held positions at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the Institute of Medical Technology in Tampere, Finland, and the Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She has a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and has contributed to over 40 publications on mitochondrial function and disease.

Executive Director, CHOP Mitochondrial Medicine Frontier Program and Professor, Division of Human Genetics, Department of Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, USA

Dr. Falk is a clinical geneticist who serves as executive director of the CHOP Mitochondrial Medicine Frontier Program. She is the principal investigator of an active National Institutes of Health-, pharma-, and philanthropic-funded translational research laboratory that investigates the causes and global metabolic consequences of mitochondrial disease, as well as targeted therapies, in C. elegans, zebrafish, mouse, and human tissue models of genetic-based respiratory chain dysfunction. Dr. Falk is also principal investigator on clinical trials to better characterise and test candidate therapies in patients living with mitochondrial disease.

The Mitochondrial Medicine Research Group, under Dr. Falk’s direction, works to improve clinical care, diagnostic approaches, improved therapies, and robust genomic and bioinformatics resources for mitochondrial disease. In particular, the group organises the global Mitochondrial Disease Sequence Data Resource (MSeqDR) Consortium to provide centralised curation and analytic capabilities for genomic analysis tools and integrated knowledge of genes, variants, and phenotypes relevant to mitochondrial disease.

Auditor, Japan Paediatric Society; Chairman, IRB; Vice-president, Centre for Intractable Diseases, Department of Paediatrics & Clinical Genomics, Faculty of Medicine, Saitama Medical University, Japan.

Prof. Ohtake received his MD from Chiba University School of Medicine, Japan, in 1979 and received training as a general paediatrician at the Department of Paediatrics, Chiba University Hospital. He joined the Department of Biochemistry, Chiba University School of Medicine from 1982 to 1984, and Institute for Medical Genetics, Kumamoto University Medical School, Japan in 1987, where he learned about inherited metabolic diseases, especially urea cycle disorders. After receiving his PhD from Chiba University School of Medicine in 1988, he took the position of lecturer in the school’s Department of Paediatrics from 1988 to 1992. Between 1992 and 1994, Dr. Ohtake worked as a Principal Investigator at the Department of Clinical Genetics, The Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Japan, focusing his work on fatty acid oxidation defects.

In 1994, Dr. Ohtake moved to the Department of Paediatrics, Saitama Medical University, Japan, as an Assistant Professor. On leave from Saitama Medical University, he joined the Department of Biochemistry, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia from 2002 to 2003, where he learned about mitochondrial diseases under Dr. Mike T Ryan and Dr. David R Thorburn. Upon his return to Japan, he began research about the molecular basis of mitochondrial respiratory chain disorders with Prof. Yasushi Okazaki and Dr. Kei Murayama, during which time they identified over 10 novel disease causative genes. Dr. Ohtake became a professor in the Department of Paediatrics, Saitama Medical University in 2007, and proceeded to double as a vice-president at the Centre for Intractable Diseases in 2015 and as a professor within the Department of Clinical Genomics in 2019.

Academy Professor in Clinical Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki; Chief Physician, HUSlab Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki, Finland.

Dr. Anu Suomalainen Wartiovaara is Sigrid Jusélius Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Helsinki and the director of the Molecular Neurology Research Program at the Biomedicum-Helsinki Research Institute. She trained at the University of Helsinki, as well as at Columbia University in New York City, USA and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She has also served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Her research group, which focuses on the combination of basic biological approaches to clarify molecular pathogenesis of disease, belongs to the FinMIT Centre of Excellence of the Academy of Finland.

Dr. Suomalainen Wartiovaara’s scientific mission is to develop cures for progressive mitochondrial disorders of the brain and muscle that are currently untreatable. To achieve this goal, her group has generated a wide selection of disease models, both model organisms and human materials, and utilises these to clarify molecular pathogenesis. Their recent data show that primary mitochondrial dysfunction modifies major biosynthetic pathways in the cytoplasm and affects cell differentiation pathways and genome maintenance in cell-autonomous and non-autonomous manners. The pathways have relevance for neurodegenerative disorders and offer variable targets for intervention.