Welcome to the Longo Lab

Longo Lab

Dr. Longo and his research team are focused on elucidating mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disorders and developing small molecule therapeutic strategies that target these mechanisms. Neurotrophin proteins bind to multiple receptors (p75, TrkA-C) to modulate survival, functional and degenerative intracellular signaling and synaptic function. The Longo laboratory and collaborators pioneered the mechanistic principle that non-peptide small molecules targeting individual receptor epitopes can activate or modulate neurotrophin receptors to produce distinctive biological effects capable of inhibiting disease mechanisms. This work has led to successful efficacy trials in many mouse models of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s diseases as well as spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, ischemic stroke recovery, Rett syndrome, and epilepsy. One of our small molecules, the p75NTR ligand, LM11A-31, has progressed through a human phase 1 safety trial and is in a phase 2a Alzheimer’s disease trial ongoing in Europe. We have been fortunate to execute the rare full translational spectrum of: identifying novel basic mechanisms, creating novel entities to target those mechanisms, moving these therapeutic candidates through mouse and other pre-clinical studies, progressing one of these candidates to first-in-human safety studies and testing of the first-in-class therapeutic entity in neurodegenerative disease subjects. 

Neurology & Neurological Sciences

The Longo Lab is part of the Department of Neurology & Neurological Sciences

Contact Us

For Longo Lab inquiries, please email: Danielle Simmons, PhD