BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cerevance, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company advancing new medicines for brain diseases, has appointed pharmaceutical industry veteran, James Summers, Ph.D., as a key scientific advisor to guide the company in its drug discovery and development efforts. Dr. Summers brings extensive experience in the discovery of new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, pain and psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Summers has held a number of leadership positions with Abbott and AbbVie, including most recently as Vice President of Neuroscience Research at AbbVie where he led teams based in Ludwigshafen, Germany, Lake County, Illinois and Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his tenure with Abbott, Dr. Summers served as Divisional Vice President, Advanced Technology, leading a business unit engaged in technologies and services to accelerate drug discovery research across all of Abbott’s therapeutic areas and sites.

“We are delighted to have Dr. Summers bring his strategic and scientific expertise to our team as an advisor during this time of rapid growth at Cerevance,” said Brad Margus, Chief Executive Officer of the company. “His expertise in neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases will be vital as we prioritize and advance novel targets for a range of central nervous system disorders.”

“Cerevance’s powerful platform is generating vast amounts of never-before-seen expression data that should enable us to treat diseases in ways not previously possible,” said Dr. Summers. “I am excited to be joining the company’s scientific advisory team to bring a global pharmaceutical perspective to the challenges and opportunities that abound in the CNS space.”

Dr. Summers earned a Bachelor of Science degree, summa cum laude, in chemistry from Denison University and a doctorate in organic chemistry from Harvard University.

About Cerevance

Cerevance is a private pharmaceutical company focused on central nervous system diseases. The company’s strengths include its powerful NETSseq target discovery platform, a large collection of human brain tissue samples, a pipeline of novel discovery-stage and clinical-stage compounds and a team with a proven track record. Its scientists believe that they are well positioned to deliver life-changing therapeutics for patients who have brain-related disorders.