Daniel Benjamin
President & Chief Executive Officer Cascade Biotechnology
Daniel E. Benjamin Ph.D. is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of our company. With his extensive knowledge and experience, he leads the organization in setting strategic goals and implementing effective business strategies. He oversees the overall operations of the company, including financial performance, resource allocation, and risk management. Under his leadership, the company has achieved significant growth and success.
Dr Benjamin’s graduate studies began in Prof. Harbans Lal’s Lab in the department of pharmacology at University of North Texas Health Sciences Center. The department focused on Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive. Harbans Lal was one of the first investigators to test for a role of autoimmunity in age-related cognitive decline. This training occurred at the dawn of Alzheimer’s research, and taught that extreme risk can result in substantial reward. In addition to the core knowledge of pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, Dr. Benjamin learned neuroanatomy and neurocircuitry in depth, as well as the logical basis and scientific precedents that allowed for solid functional conclusions on the neuroanatomical basis of physiology. Dr. Benjamin was the recipient of a competitive award from American Cyanamid Corporation to study the neuropharmacology and molecular biology of serotonin receptors. At Cascade, we are currently studying the role of complement in Renal disease, Schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease and developing a gene therapy technology to deliver our complement depleting protein.
Seminars
As the complement field expands beyond established targets, the challenge is identifying the mechanisms most likely to drive meaningful clinical benefit and developing robust approaches to demonstrate target engagement, differentiate therapeutic strategies and inform clinical development.
This workshop will cover:
- Evaluating emerging targets beyond C3 and C5, including upstream regulators, alternative pathway components, membrane attack complex targets and intracellular complement
- Elucidating pathological mechanisms to guide target selection and maximize therapeutic efficacy while preserving immune function
- Applying proteomics, biomarkers and functional assays to quantify complement activity, identify novel disease-driving mechanisms and de-risk target selection
- Addressing challenges in measuring target engagement, including sample acquisition, low-abundance proteins, pathway redundancy and the need for clinically meaningful biomarkers that accurately reflect biological activity
- Addressing challenges in sample collection to measure target engagement across a complex complement cascade
