Irina Antonijevic
Chief Medical Officer Trace Neuroscience
Dr. Irina Antonijevic serves as Chief Medical Officer at Trace Neuroscience. To this role, she brings more than three decades of experience in clinical psychiatry and neurology, academia and CNS drug discovery and development with a focus on genetic therapies.
Prior to joining Trace, Irina served as Chief Medical Officer at EveryONE Medicines, a precision medicine company targeting genetic variants causing fatal, neurodegenerative diseases. In this role, she was responsible for designing and implementing an individualized medicines platform focused on correcting uniquely rare neurogenetic mutations. She previously served as Chief Medical Officer and Head of R&D at Triplet Therapeutics, a company developing treatments targeting a genetic modifier for repeat expansion diseases. Earlier in her career, Irina held clinical and scientific roles at various pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including Wave Life Sciences, vasopharm GmbH, Sanofi Genzyme, Lundbeck, and Schering AG.
Irina is a board-certified physician trained in Psychiatry and Neurology at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry and was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Berlin. She holds an M.D. from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry and a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh.
Seminars
- What is the current understanding of TDP‑43 pathology across ALS, FTD, and related neurodegenerative diseases, and how does it inform therapeutic strategies?
- How can therapies be designed to target upstream TDP‑43 mislocalization, aggregation, or loss-of-function, independent of clinical symptom presentation?
- The role of biomarkers and imaging in detecting subclinical TDP‑43 pathology and enabling earlier intervention in patients
- Challenges and opportunities in translating preclinical findings into human studies, including target engagement, dosing strategies, and safety considerations
- Potential combinatorial approaches, such as pairing TDP‑43-targeted therapies with neuroprotective or gene-modulating modalities to enhance efficacy
- Key learnings from nonclinical development of an ASO intended for nearly all people with ALS, including validation of potency, durability, and CNS biodistribution
- How mitigation of dose-dependent ASO side effects informed dosing strategy, injection frequency, and overall clinical trial design
- Presenting first-in-human clinical data, including early safety, PK, and target-engagement insights
- Insights from regulatory interactions shaped by the unique profile of the ASO and the requirements for first-in-human advancement
