Mansuo Lu Shannon
Chief Scientific Officer Prevail Therapeutics
Dr. Mansuo Shannon joined AskBio in 2024 and serves as its Chief Scientific Officer (CSO). She is responsible for developing and implementing the company’s R&D strategy and leads all aspects of the discovery and development of AskBio’s gene therapy platform. Dr. Shannon also oversees the global teams charged with advancing that platform and provides scientific leadership to the CEO, Board of Directors, and company as a whole, in addition to being a key partner of the broader Bayer R&D leadership team and Bayer’s scientific community.
Prior to joining AskBio, Dr. Shannon served as CSO at Prevail Therapeutics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company, where she established a robust gene therapy product portfolio in neurology and rare diseases. Earlier in her career, she spent more than 10 years at Eli Lilly, where she served in leadership roles of increasing responsibility and advanced multiple therapeutics into human clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Shannon also previously held scientific leadership roles at Chugai/Roche Group and Merck.
Dr. Shannon earned her doctorate in Molecular Biology with Dr. Tom Shenk at Princeton University and conducted her postdoctoral research under Dr. Susumu Tonegawa (1987 Nobel Laureate) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Seminars
- How regulatory expectations differ across modalities (oral small molecules, ASOs, viral gene therapies, RNA medicines, cell therapies) and how developers can prepare for emerging FDA/EMA frameworks in ALS
- Which modalities are best suited for distinct ALS biological subtypes, including TDP-43 proteinopathy, C9orf72 repeat expansion, inflammatory/neuroimmune signatures, and mitochondrial/metabolic dysfunction
- Opportunities and challenges for combining modalities—for example coupling gene modulation with neuroprotective small molecules, pairing oligos with smallmolecule chaperones, or integrating metabolic stabilizers with anti-inflammatory approaches
- How modality mechanisms intersect (protein homeostasis, RNA regulation, axonal transport, synaptic resilience) and how cross-mechanistic synergy could inform trial design or biomarker development
- What is needed to run smarter, modality-agnostic clinical trials—harmonized biomarkers (NfL, speech, digital mobility), shared control arms, adaptive designs, and platform/basket approaches
