Vidyasagar Vuligonda

Dr. Vuligonda has over 30 years of experience in small molecule drug design and product development, management of research programs in small molecule therapeutics companies, and entrepreneurship in the formation of small molecule drug development companies. He is the Co-founder, and President, of Athena Life Sciences Inc., an early-stage drug development company and contract research organization. He has developed herbal oral therapeutics in the treatment of digestive disorders and designed and managed the human clinical trials of these herbal products.

He also served as Senior Vice President and Head of Life Sciences of a startup of Life Sciences/IT collaborative company (Infolob Solutions) and developed contract research programs in the small molecule therapeutics area. In collaboration with colleagues in the biology and toxicology groups at Allergan, he has developed several novel small molecule drugs; and was involved in the clinical development, process development, manufacturing of these drugs. Several of these molecules are in the clinical development stage, including IRX4204 and IRX5183, both currently in development by Io Therapeutics as potential oncology, neurologic and autoimmune disorder therapeutics. A major portion of his medicinal chemistry career involved retinoid research and development. He has also developed several novel synthetic methodologies and applied the methodologies to the synthesis of small-molecule drugs.