Dr. Salah Mahmoudi
Salah Mahmoudi, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of Discovery Research at Alkahest and the Cofounder and Scientific Advisor at NoraChem.
Salah, with his 19+ years of expertise in aging, inflammation, and cancer biology, has a proven track record in target identification, validation, and preclinical drug development. Throughout his career, he has led cross-disciplinary teams and innovative approaches for target discovery and small molecule design.
At Akkahest, he leads the target discovery and in vitro biology teams focused on developing strategies for target selection and validation for neurovascular/immune and muscle indications. Previously, between 2021 and 2022, he was the In Vitro Biology Group Lead, where he oversaw cellular model development, target validation, hit-to-lead generation, and MOA studies. He initiated and oversaw the development of a computationally powered screening platform for candidate therapeutic target identification from plasma.
In 2019, Salah cofounded and led the startup NoraChem, leveraging generative AI for novel small molecule design. Norachem uses AI-based generative design to make novel drugs for specific diseases, from scratch.
Between 2019 and 2021, Salah was also Senior Scientist in Cancer Immunology Discovery at Pfizer, developing novel therapies related to tumor immunogenicity and cytokine biology. He led a small molecule phenotypic screening program for tumor immunogenicity and worked closely with Data Science to identify biomarkers for patient stratification.
Salah earned his Ph.D. in Experimental Oncology in 2011 from the Karolinska Institutet with his thesis WRAP53 Unwrapped; Roles in Nuclear Architecture and Cancer. He earned his Master’s Degree of Science in Molecular Biology from Uppsala University, Sweden in 2005.
After graduation, Salah was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and conducted his postdoctoral studies in Anne Brunet’s lab, for almost six years, until 2017, when he became a Staff Research Scientist until 2019. While there, he initiated and led cross-disciplinary projects on aging, inflammation, and regenerative medicine, contributed to collaborative studies on proteostasis and epigenetic marks in aging neuronal stem cells, and published 8 peer-reviewed articles in top-tier scientific journals.
Read Aging and reprogramming: a two-way street, CDK-mediated activation of the SCFFBXO28 ubiquitin ligase promotes MYC-driven transcription and tumourigenesis and predicts poor survival in breast cancer, H3K4me3 breadth is linked to cell identity and transcriptional consistency, and Bursts of reprogramming: a path to extend lifespan?
Salah is Scientific Advisor at H7 BioCapital, a global venture platform that supports the transformational growth of healthcare companies.
He is also a Live Forever Club member with his Stanford University optimistic about human rejuvenation contribution.
Read Turning back time with emerging rejuvenation strategies, WRAP53 Is Essential for Cajal Body Formation and for Targeting the Survival of Motor Neuron Complex to Cajal Bodies, and Remodeling of epigenome and transcriptome landscapes with aging in mice reveals widespread induction of inflammatory responses.
Visit his LinkedIn profile, Google Scholar page, Academia profile, and The Org profile. Follow him on Neurotree and Twitter.
