Dr. Nicholas Ashton is a world leader in the development, validation and use of fluid biomarkers, including cerebrospinal fluid and blood tests, in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. He is the senior director of the Banner Research Fluid Biomarker Program. Dr. Ashton is advancing biomarker research, working closely with academic and industry researchers inside Arizona and around the world. The program is establishing a destination center for the development and use of cerebrospinal fluid and blood-based biomarkers in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders.
Dr. Ashton received his Ph.D. in 2017 from King’s College London in the group of Professor Simon Lovestone and has been an associate professor in the group of Henrik Zetterberg and Kaj Blennow at University of Gothenburg, Sweden since 2019. Dr. Ashton has a decade of experience in biofluid analysis and assay development for Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders.
Masoud Toloue is the CEO of Quanterix. With a career spanning leadership positions in both private and publicly traded companies, he has consistently commercialized disruptive technologies and scaled businesses to achieve exceptional results.Prior to joining Quanterix, Masoud served as Senior VP of Diagnostics at PerkinElmer, where he successfully grew the business unit to contribute over 50% of the company’s total revenue. Earlier at PerkinElmer, he led the Applied Genomics business. His entrepreneurial acumen is evidenced by his role as founder and leader of Bioo Scientific’s next-generation sequencing business, which was acquired by PerkinElmer in 2016. He also co-founded and led Genohub, transforming it from a supplier of sequencing-matching technology into a global platform for managing sequencing projects.
Masoud holds a doctoral degree in molecular cell biology from the University at Buffalo and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in protein biochemistry at The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.
As the pool of approved therapies continues to (hopefully) expand, the clinical and diagnostic testing communities need to do a better job at ensuring the right patients move through this journey more quickly – and accurately – to improve their health and prognosis.