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Richard Carl Elciario Dolmetsch is a Colombian-American neuroscientist, Stanford University professor and biotechnology entrepreneur. He is known for his research on calcium signaling in neurons and lymphocytes, and for his work in neuropsychiatric disease. He was an early developer of human stem cell models for studying diseases of the brain and heart, both in his laboratory at Stanford University and at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. As the Global Head of Neuroscience at Novartis, he helped create a drug pipeline for neuropsychiatric diseases,, introduced human stem cell models as tools for drug discovery in neuroscience  and contributed to the development of several treatments for brain disorders that are now in the clinic including Aimovig (Erenumab) for migraine and Kesimpta (Ofatumumab) for multiple sclerosis. Dolmetsch was also involved in early successes in gene therapy, including two approved therapies - Zolgensma (a cure for spinal muscular atrophy, sold by Novartis) and Hemgenix (the first gene therapy for hemophilia, made by uniQure and sold by CSL Limited). Dolmetsch is currently the President of Tempero Bio, a biotech company seeking to cure substance use disorders, and an Adjunct Professor in Neurobiology at Stanford University.

Biography and education
Dolmetsch was born and raised in Cali, Colombia and attended Colegio Bolivar. He was a member of the Colombian National Track team, winning the Colombian National Championships and representing his county in both the Pan American and Junior World Championships. Dolmetsch migrated to the United States to earn a Bachelor in Science from Brown University. He obtained a doctorate in Neuroscience from Stanford University in 1997 under the supervision of Richard Lewis, where he worked on the role of calcium oscillations in lymphocyte activation He completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Michael E. Greenberg at Harvard Medical School where he studied excitation-transcription coupling, specifically the role of voltage-gated calcium channels in controlling the activation of transcription factors in neurons . His graduate and postdoctoral work established a role for intracellular calcium oscillation frequency and amplitude in regulating transcription in eukaryotic cells.

Career
Dolmetsch led a laboratory at Stanford University from 2002-2013 that studied the influence of electrical activity and calcium signals on early brain development For two years he was also a Senior Director at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Early work in the Dolmetsch lab described some of the signaling pathways that connect L-type calcium channels to gene activation, and identified the link between voltage gated calcium channels and store-operated calcium channels. The lab developed technologies to study cell signaling, including light-activated signaling proteins to control biochemical cascades, and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based models of cardiac and neuronal cells. His lab was one of the first to use neurons differentiated from human iPSCs to model neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric diseases, both at Stanford and at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. His papers on Timothy Syndrome and Phelan McDermid Syndrome identified neuronal defects in induced pluripotent stem cells from patients, setting the stage for the use of these models for drug development.

In 2013, Dolmetsch accepted a position as the Global Head of Neuroscience at the Novartis Institute of Biological Research (NIBR). At NIBR, he founded a research and early development team and curated a drug development pipeline that included treatments for rare orphan disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, calcium channelopathies and neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and addiction. His group pioneered the use of human stem cell-derived cellular models and genome-scale CRISPR screens in neuroscience drug development  and invested in adeno-associated (AAV) gene therapies. His team at NIBR helped bring several therapies to the clinic, including Erenumab (Aimovig) for migraine, Siponimod (Mayzent) and Ofatumumab (Kesimpta) for multiple sclerosis, and AVX001 (Zolgensma), the first gene therapy for SMA. After seven years at Novartis, Dolmetsch was appointed President of Research and Development at uniQure, a company developing gene therapies for the liver and the central nervous system; he was later promoted to Chief Scientific Officer. Under his leadership uniQure built a broad gene therapy pipeline that included AMT-130, the first gene therapy for Huntington’s disease, AMT260, the first gene therapy for temporal lobe epilepsy, and AMT-191, a treatment for Fabry. He also led uniQure’s successful clinical testing and registration of Hemgenix, a cure for hemophilia that received FDA approval in 2022. Hemgenix received the 2023 Prix Galien USA Award in the category of Rare/Orphan Diseases.

Impact and awards
Dolmetsch has published over 70 scientific papers and received numerous awards for his research, including an Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences, the 2007 Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award , a McKnight Foundation technology award in neuroscience and an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. While at Stanford he was named a Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative investigator and a Barbara and John Packard Faculty Scholar. The gene therapy Hemgenix, which he helped shepherd into the clinic at uniQure, was awarded the 2023 Prix Galien Award for Best Product for Rare/Orphan Diseases.

Dolmetsch has mentored many scientists that have gone on to successful careers in business and academia including Sergiu P. Pașca Alexander Shcheglovitov, Chan-young Park, Jacob Brenner, Georgia Panagiotakos, Masayuki Yazawa, Eric Green, Natalia Gomez-Ospina, Ajamete Kaykas, Fiona Elwood, Gopi Shankar, Rajeev Sivasankaran and Melvin Evers. He is currently the President of the clinical-stage biotechnology company Tempero Bio that is developing novel medicines to help patients recover from addiction. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University, where he teaches courses in neurobiology, biotechnology and drug development.