Andreas Wissmann

Andreas Wissmann, Ph.D. Pharmaceutical drug discovery based on the use of model animals; technologies related to medical education.

Andreas completed his PhD studies in Erlangen, Germany where his work laid the basis for the Tet-on and Tet-off gene regulation system that has been widely used for inducible eukaryotic gene expression studies. Following a brief stint in Boston, Andreas moved to the University of Calgary for further post-doctoral studies. During his time, Andreas identified the first genetic mutations in Rho-kinase and mapped out the first genetic pathways in which this gene plays a role. Rho-kinase has subsequently been shown to be potentially involved in multiple human pathologies, such as brain injury, hypertension, spinal cord injuries and cancer. In 1998 Andreas moved to San Francisco and joined Axys Pharmaceuticals (which later became Celera Genomics). During his time at Axys Andreas developed a chemical high-throughput whole animal-based screen for compounds that inhibit Rho-kinase pathway activity. These screens led to the identification of multiple new chemical entities (NCE) which were subsequently shown to also have effects in mammalian cells consistent with reduced Rho-kinase pathway activity.

In 2001 he co-founded NemaGain Research LLC a company based in Madison, Wisconsin focused on using whole animal models of human disease for pharmaceutical drug discovery. In 2003 Andreas co-founded Calgary-based NemaRx Pharmaceuticals with a similar technology platform. The company worked mostly in the area of identifying chemical enhancers and suppressors of antidepressants (shared mechanisms between SSRIs and tricyclics) coupled with subsequent genetic analysis of such compounds. These studies identified antidepressant-mediated increases in cellular resilience (stress-resistance), possibly mediated through mitochondria, as one of the shared mechanisms of action between SSRIs & tricyclics. Similar studies were conducted for whole animal-based models of excessive growth factor signaling (with a focus on possible new cancer therapeutics).

In 2010 Andreas joined a laboratory instrumentation start-up company (Nanalysis Corp; benchtop NMR) and in 2012 he co-founded The Lindsay Project Corp., a medical anatomy & physiology educational software company based on technology that has been developed at the University of Calgary.