Congratulations to Marc Shenouda

Congratulations to CPIN student member Dr. Marc Shenouda, supervised by Dr. Janice Robertson (Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology) on recently completing the CPIN requirements and graduating from the PhD program. Dr. Marc Shenouda’s research with Dr. Robertson focused on developing therapeutic strategies to abrogate TDP-43 aggregation in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (FTLD). Following the development of TDP-43 aggregation assays, he identified three approaches to prevent and/or reverse TDP-43 aggregation and rescue neurotoxicity. He has published two papers from his work and has two first-author manuscripts in preparation for publication, in addition to a provisional patent. During his PhD, Dr. Shenouda obtained a highly competitive PhD Trainee Award from the ALS Society of Canada, Brain Canada and Fondation Vincent Bourque. Earlier this year, Drs. Robertson and Shenouda received the Connaught Innovation Award for his work on a therapeutic small molecule targeting TDP-43 aggregation. Throughout his degree, he has given over 15 oral and poster presentations, both nationally and internationally. It is of note that Shenouda was the recipient of the CPIN Excellence Award in Poster Presentation in 2019 and 2021. Outside of research, Dr. Shenouda held multiple roles as an undergraduate mentor, teaching assistant, and guest lecturer at the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, the Department of Biological Sciences and CPIN. Dr. Shenouda currently holds the prestigious AFTD Holloway Post-doctoral Fellowship and is continuing his work to advance a therapeutic small molecule for eventual clinical testing in ALS and FTLD patients. Moreover, after capitalizing on multiple entrepreneurship resources offered by Medicine by Design, Health Innovation Hub, Lab2Market, Dal Innovates and Innovation Factory, he has founded Neuropeutics Inc, a pharma startup developing targeted therapies to extend neurodegenerative disease patients’ survival and improve their quality of life.