Dr. Mark Vander Wal is a Medicinal Chemist/Scientist who joined the Prusiner lab on November 1, 2021 as an Associate Adjunct Professor.

Dr. Vander Wal received his Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from Princeton University – his postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley – and came to us most recently from industry (Plexxikon Inc. and Cytokinetics Inc.).  Mark has contributed to the advancement of new therapeutics and led research teams to pursue difficult drug targets. He was a member of the discovery team that discovered a cardiac sarcomere inhibitor, Aficamten, which is currently in phase II clinical trials.  He also was on the discovery team for a follow-on program to develop a 2nd generation molecule for cardiac sarcomere inhibition. This effort led to the discovery of CK-271 which is currently in phase I clinical trial. Mark will be leveraging his synthetic chemistry skills to synthesize chemical compounds supporting the IND’s drug discovery efforts.