Kannan Rangaramanujam, PhD
Dr. Kannan Rangaramanujam is the Arnall Patz distinguished professor of ophthalmology and co-director of center for nanomedicine at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from California Institute of Technology. He plays a key role in Ashvattha from a scientific perspective, helping with identifying high value therapeutic opportunities, product development, preclinical studies, and chemistry. He played a leading role in the development and validation of the dendrimer platform over the last 15 years, with >20 issued and 50 pending patents, licensed to Ashvattha. His research group at Hopkins Medicine works on translational nanomedicine centered on the unique hydroxyl dendrimer platform technology to develop treatments for inflammatory disorders. Targeted therapeutic approaches are being developed and validated in CNS, ocular and liver disorders, and oncology. He collaborates with more than 30 PI-level researchers at Hopkins on this platform, and has >100 peer-reviewed publications, with significant, sustained funding support from NIH. He has won several recognitions, including fellowship of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE) and NSF CAREER award.
Nicholas A. Peppas, Sc.D
Nicholas A. Peppas, Sc.D. is the Cockrell Family Regents Chaired Professor in the Departments of Chemical, Biomedical Engineering, Pediatrics, Surgery and Pharmacy, and Director of the Institute of Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine of the University of Texas at Austin. His work in biomaterials, drug delivery bio-nanotechnology and nanomaterials follows a multidisciplinary approach by blending modern molecular and cellular biology with engineering principles to design the next-generation of therapeutic agent release systems for treatment of diabetes, autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases, medical systems and devices for patient treatment. Over the past four decades he has set the fundamentals and rational design of biomedical systems and developed models of drug and protein diffusion in controlled release devices and biological tissues. He has 145,000 citations with H=178. His inventions include articular cartilage, new vocal cords, non-thrombogenic biomaterials and artificial organs, delivery systems for insulin (diabetes), calcitonin (osteoporosis), interferon-beta (multiple sclerosis) and other applications. Dr. Peppas has received the Founders (Simon Ramo) Award of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE, 2012) and the Adam Yarmolinsky Award of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM, 2018), the highest recognitions of these two Academies. Peppas is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Peppas is a fellow of AAAS, AIChE, APS, ACS, MRS, SFB, BMES, AIMBE, CRS, AAPS, and ASEE. He holds a Dipl. Eng. from the NTU of Athens (1971), a Sc.D. from MIT (1973)
Hamid Ghandehari, PhD
Dr. Ghandehari is a Professor and George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Presidential Endowed Chair in the Departments of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Professor, Biomedical Engineering, and Director of Utah Center for Nanomedicine. His research focuses on the design of recombinant polymers for localized drug delivery, targeted delivery of polymer therapeutics to solid tumors, oral delivery of chemotherapeutics, and assessing the biocompatibility of silica and dendritic nanoconstructs. Dr. Ghandehari is Editor in Chief of Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, and Controlled Release Society, and serves on boards of several drug delivery journals and organizations. He received his BS in Pharmacy and PhD in Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Utah.
Kim Green, PhD
Dr. Kim Green is Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. To date, his research has resulted in 81 peer-reviewed articles which have collectively been cited more than 23,000 times. He conducted his Ph.D. in Cellular Neurophysiology at the University of Leeds in the UK exploring the link between hypoxia and the production of the Ab peptide implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. Following this, he explored various environmental factors and the development of Alzheimer’s disease using transgenic mouse models of the disease, including diet, stress, and cognitive exercises. Furthermore, he identified several therapeutics that progressed into human clinical trials, including nicotinamide, and ST101. Over the past decade his work has focused on the immune cells of the brain, known as microglia, and developed approaches based around the colony stimulating factor 1 receptor (CSF1R) to modulate this tissue. In the Alzheimer’s disease brain these microglia surround the amyloid-plaques, mounting a sustained inflammatory attack that lasts for the duration of the disease. Through this approach his work has uncovered various roles that these cells play in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, including their facilitation of synaptic and neuronal loss, as well as in the development of amyloid-plaques in the first place. These findings show that targeting dysfunctional microglial populations with the right approaches should have the ability to slow or prevent multiple facets of Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis.
Samir Mitragotri, PhD
Dr. Samir Mitragotri is the Hiller Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. Dr. Mitragotri has made groundbreaking contributions to the field of biological barriers and drug delivery, which has led to the development of new materials and technologies for diagnosis and treatment of various ailments including diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, skin conditions and infections. Dr. Mitragotri received his Ph.D. from MIT and B.S. from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, both in Chemical Engineering.
G. Mani Subramanian, MD, PhD
Dr. Subramanian is the founding CEO of The Liver Company (TLC) and a Venture Partner at Samsara BioCapital. He was previously at Gilead Sciences from 2011-2020, where he was the Senior Vice President and Therapeutic Area Head for Liver Diseases. He was responsible for the developing and implementing the R&D vision for liver diseases, which lead to the approval of compounds for the treatment of patients with viral hepatitis (Sovaldi®, Harvoni®, Epclusa®, Vosevi®, Vemlidy®), and a compound portfolio in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, cholestatic liver disease, and alcoholic hepatitis. From 2002-2010, he was at Human Genome Sciences where he led clinical programs of albumin-fusion proteins and monoclonal antibodies for immunology and infectious disease indications, notably clinical development of Zalbin® for HCV, and ABthrax® for anthrax. He started his biotechnology career at Celera Genomics in 2000 and was a major contributor to the proteome annotation of the human, mouse, and anopheles genome sequencing efforts. He has over 160 scientific publications including in NEJM, Lancet, JAMA, Science & Nature. Dr. Subramanian received his medical degree at the Armed Forces Medical College, India, completed his PhD (Immunology & Microbiology) at the University at Michigan, Ann Arbor, followed by residency in Internal Medicine at University Hospitals of Cleveland, Case Western Reserve University, and fellowship in Infectious Diseases, with post-doctoral research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH.