Fazel Shabanpoor, PhD, heads the Peptide and Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Laboratory at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne. He is a chemist and pharmacologist with experience in the design and synthesis of peptide and antisense oligonucleotide therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases affecting movement. He has particular expertise in the development of peptide vectors enabling drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier to act in the central nervous system and is an inventor on three international patents in this area. He has extensive capabilities in synthetic peptide chemistry and has developed novel methods to create new compounds with specialized properties. He also has expertise in antisense oligonucleotide design and synthesis.