Vertero is innovating beyond the brain to develop differentiated therapies to turn the tide of challenging neurodegenerative diseases and preserve patients’ quality of life for longer.

While many standard-of-care therapies address the symptoms, our discoveries target causative mechanisms that lie outside the brain, in the peripheral nervous system.

Our multidisciplinary team of specialists in microbiology, pharmacology, chemistry, neurology, and clinical development have allowed us to create a novel and groundbreaking approach to the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Our team is powered by strong technical acumen combined with a culture of transparency, collaboration, curiosity, and persistence to deliver on real unmet needs.

A. Stewart Campbell, PhD
Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Stewart Campbell joined Vertero Therapeutics in 2017 and was appointed the company’s Chief Executive Officer in February 2021. Stewart has played a fundamental role in the company’s growth and strategy, bringing more than 30 years of experience leading and building teams that have strong track records of discovering and developing novel therapeutics for the patients who need them. As CEO, he secured multiple rounds of equity financing to support advancement and growth of Vertero.

Prior to joining Vertero, Stewart held various leadership roles at biopharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing companies, including Corden Pharma, Ancora Pharmaceuticals (where he led its acquisition by Corden), Surface Logix, and Insmed, after starting his career as a medicinal chemist at Boehringer-Ingelheim. During his career, Stewart has been a co-inventor on more than 20 issued patent families, including the foundational patents for the graft-versus-host disease drug Rezurock®.

Stewart holds a BS with Honors in Chemistry from St. Francis Xavier University, a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Queen’s University (Canada) and completed his post-doctoral research at Duke University.

Becca Senter, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Becca Senter joined Vertero in January 2022, bringing expertise in drug discovery and extensive experience leading non-clinical pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, and toxicology efforts to identify and validate therapeutic targets in neurological indications and drive development programs to IND and through clinical development.

Prior to Vertero, Becca held roles of increasing responsibility at Flexion Therapeutics, most recently as Director, Non-clinical and Translational Research. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Picower Institute of Learning and Memory.

Becca received her PhD in Pharmacology from Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, and a Bachelor of Science degree from St. Lawrence University.

Amy DiGiovanni, MS
VP Quality and Data Protection

Amy DiGiovanni joined Vertero in 2025, bringing more than 20 years of expertise and experience in Quality Assurance, GxP compliance, and Quality Management System development.

Prior to Vertero, Amy led Quality Assurance for NeuroTrauma Sciences, Kira Pharmaceuticals, and EQRx, and drove quality for clinical and nonclinical programs at Vertex and Biogen.

Amy completed her Master’s degree in regulatory affairs at Northeastern University.

Radka Graf
Director, Preclinical Development and Operations

Radka Graf joined Vertero in April 2018, bringing more than 20 years of experience in neuroscience and metabolic drug discovery and development, as well as expertise in guiding programs from preclinical into clinical phases.

Prior to Vertero, Radka worked in Pfizer’s global R&D organization with progressive responsibility driving neuroscience programs from initial discovery through IND-enabling studies. She was also responsible for managing teams as well as external collaboration partners including contract research organizations (CROs) and academic institutions.

Radka holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Rutgers University.

Margaret Nelson-Lowe, PhD
Acting Head of Clinical Operations

Dr. Margaret Nelson-Lowe brings to Vertero nearly 15 years of experience as a clinical operations professional, project manager, and clinician, and has held senior roles in Clinical Operations for Vertero since 2022.

Prior to joining Vertero, Margaret managed clinical trials for Praxis Precision Medicine for the treatment of CNS disorders, specifically depression, movement disorders, and epilepsy. She was a clinical project manager for Sobi North America, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a clinical psychologist for headspace, Australia’s National Youth Mental Health Foundation.

Margaret holds PhD and Master’s degrees in clinical psychology as well as a BA degree with Honors in Psychology, from the University of Melbourne (Australia).

Vladimir Skljarevski, MD
Acting Head of Clinical Development and Medicine

Dr. Vladimir Skljarevski brings to Vertero more than 20 years of leadership and global neuroscience drug development experience across all phases of clinical research in academia, big pharma, and small biotech companies, and extensive regulatory, clinical operations, business development, and partnership building experience within the US, the EU, Japan, and China.

Most recently, Vlad was the Executive Medical Director at Cortexyme and Chief Medical Oﬃcer at Tetra Therapeutics. He has held numerous senior level roles, including at Eli Lilly and Company where he designed and conducted more than 20 large Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials which represented the basis for the worldwide registration of two products — Cymbalta® for chronic pain, and Emgality® for migraine prevention.

Vlad holds an MD degree from the University of Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and is a fully trained neurosurgeon with stereotactic fellowship training from Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. He completed a neurology residency at the University of Vermont and a clinical fellowship in cerebrovascular diseases at the University of Ottawa (Canada).

A. Stewart Campbell, PhD
Chief Executive Oﬃcer

A. Stewart Campbell, PhD
Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Stewart Campbell joined Vertero Therapeutics in 2017 and was appointed the company’s Chief Executive Officer in February 2021. Stewart has played a fundamental role in the company’s growth and strategy, bringing more than 30 years of experience leading and building teams that have strong track records of discovering and developing novel therapeutics for the patients who need them. As CEO, he secured multiple rounds of equity financing to support advancement and growth of Vertero.

Prior to joining Vertero, Stewart held various leadership roles at biopharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing companies, including Corden Pharma, Ancora Pharmaceuticals (where he led its acquisition by Corden), Surface Logix, and Insmed, after starting his career as a medicinal chemist at Boehringer-Ingelheim. During his career, Stewart has been a co-inventor on more than 20 issued patent families, including the foundational patents for the graft-versus-host disease drug Rezurock®.

Stewart holds a BS with Honors in Chemistry from St. Francis Xavier University, a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Queen’s University (Canada) and completed his post-doctoral research at Duke University.

Sarkis Mazmanian
Co-founder and Board Member

Dr. Sarkis K. Mazmanian is the Luis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology in the Division of Biology & Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also received his PhD training in microbiology and immunology. Sarkis was a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow and subsequently appointed assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in 2006. He moved to Caltech to investigate how the gut microbiome impacts development and function of the immune and nervous systems and pioneered the concept that researching the microbiome may lead to development of novel therapies for immunologic and neurological diseases.

Sarkis has won numerous awards including a Searle Scholar, Young Investigator of the Year at Harvard Medical School, Damon Runyon Innovation Award, was named by Discover Magazine as one of the “Best Brains in Science under 40”, “Life Science Superstar” by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, and recently received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award.

He is a founder of two biotech companies and has or currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of more than a dozen companies, academic centers, and not-for-profit foundations.

Sarah Meibusch
Chair of the Board

Sarah Meibusch is a Partner at OneVentures, focused on sourcing and supporting life sciences companies developing transformative technologies with global potential. Sarah brings over 20 years of enterprise-level leadership experience across the life sciences ecosystem, from agriculture to healthcare.

Her career spans start-ups, private and public companies (ASX- and NASDAQ-listed), multinational pharma, and university research organizations. She has a strong track record in deal-making, from early-stage investments and university collaborations to major pharma transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Prior to joining OneVentures, Sarah held roles in business development and commercial strategy in Australia and the United States, combining deep scientific expertise with commercial acumen to drive innovation to market.

She currently serves as Chair of Vertero Therapeutics, a Board Member for Kira Biotech and an Alternate Board Member and Observer for Vaxxas, Clinical Genomics and Prota Therapeutics.

Sarah holds a Bachelor of Agricultural Science with First Class Honours from the University of Queensland and a Master’s in Genomics from Cornell University. She has post-graduate training in negotiation from Harvard and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD). She is also a member of the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute Commercial Advisory Board and the AusBiotech Investment Advisory Group.

Nora Frey, PhD
Board Member

Dr. Nora Frey has been a Venture Partner at Seventure since June 2021 and brings more than 20 years of professional experience in healthcare research, investment, management, strategy and business development. Nora is based in Basel, Switzerland and focuses mainly on Nutrition, Foodtech and microbiome-related opportunities. She co-founded several companies and was a board member and chairman of companies in different fields including biotech, nutraceuticals/food production and finance/investment.

Nora started her career in 1998 as partner at Bellevue Group, Switzerland, as part of the BB Biotech team, one of the largest investors in the public and private biotech sector. She then founded Adamant Biomedical Investments AG, a successful healthcare asset management boutique, and served as the CIO and headed research and portfolio management. In 2008, Nora co-founded Cederberg GmbH, a healthcare marketing and distribution business. Nora was also centrally involved in the building of a food and nutraceuticals developer and producer in Africa.

Nora holds a PhD in Biochemistry/Immunology and a Master’s degree in Microbiology.

Michele Cucullu
Board Member

Michele Cucullu is Managing Director of Private Investments at a single-family office located in Silicon Valley and oversees the family office’s private equity investments and the foundation’s CNS investment program.

Michele has over two decades of investment experience and, prior to her current role, was Director of Private Equity at the University of California for more than a decade. Earlier, she was on the Investment Team at Caltech.

Careers

We are actively looking to grow our team!

We value every voice, cultivate a transparent, ﬂexible, and supportive work environment, and are committed to providing equal opportunities for all employees and applicants.

The Vertero team works boldly with productive curiosity to bring innovation and new understanding to patients with unmet needs.

We methodically integrate diverse expertise on our team capable of generating novel insights from disparate data sources that can help us better understand not just correlation of peripheral catalysts of neurodegenerative diseases, but to isolate true causality.

Please note: Vertero does not accept unsolicited candidate resumes from recruitment firms, placement firms, or other agencies, and is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

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