Linda L. Kusner, PhD

Dr. Kusner is a Research Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Physiology at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, and an internationally recognized expert in the basic and translational aspects of myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disorder. She directed an NIH-sponsored symposium focused on optimizing preclinical models of myasthenia gravis, and has performed extensive evaluations of the role of complement in its pathogenesis — work that led to a patent for an approach to concentrate complement inhibitors at the neuromuscular junction.

Dr. Kusner was the first to discover the role of the anti-apoptotic protein survivin in the pathology of human and animal models of myasthenia gravis, and is now investigating a survivin inhibitor strategy as a therapeutic approach. She serves as an ad hoc reviewer for numerous high-impact peer-reviewed journals and has served on study sections for the National Institutes of Health and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and is vice chair of the Medical Scientific Advisory Board of the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America.

Her work has been supported by the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America and the National Institutes of Health. She has collaborated with several companies in the biotech industry on drug development for myasthenia gravis, and serves as Chief Scientific Officer for ARC Biotechnology, which was established to further develop targeted complement inhibition for the treatment of myasthenia gravis.