Meet Our Team

Jeff Allen

Jeff Allen is Vice President, Head of Toxicology at Myrtelle and has been with the company since 2021. He has been involved with evaluating safety and efficacy of locally delivered therapeutics, especially to the brain and spinal cord, for the last 20 years. Prior to Myrtelle, Jeff was Associate Director of Toxicology at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and responsible for safety assessment of all CNS programs. Jeff was Associate Director of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Inovio Pharmaceutical working on DNA plasmid vaccines. Previously, he was a Senior Study Director at MPI Research, now Charles River-Mattawan, in the Surgery and Medical Device Division where he specialized in preclinical safety studies involving CNS direct delivery of therapeutics including gene therapies, cells, and oligonucleotides. He was a Senior Scientist at Medtronic in the Neuromodulation group exploring new uses for implanted drug delivery devices for neurologic disorders. Prior to joining industry, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of California, San Diego studying the toxicity of intrathecal opiates.

Jeff received a double major in Behavioral Neuroscience and Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD in Pharmacology from Wake Forest University. His post-doctoral training was in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of California, San Diego. He has had a lifelong fascination with the brain and became especially interested in pediatric neurological diseases while working in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh as an undergraduate.