Karen Lariosa-Willingham

I am a versatile, highly adaptable, cross-disciplinary scientist. Experienced drug discovery, translational, research scientist spanning more than 20 years professional experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Expertise of over a decade in large pharmaceutical companies, but also background in academic, start-up, established biotech, and non-profit research settings. Strong background in neuroscience, neuroinflammation, as well as biomarker discovery immunology. Areas of expertise have focused on identifying novel therapeutics for Multiple Sclerosis, Traumatic Brain Injury, Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Stroke, Cardiovascular Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Pain, Dermatology and orphan diseases. Technical expertise in designing and implementing cell-based assays, particularly high throughput screening methodologies to facilitate target discovery, direct Phase II/III clinical trials, and drug mechanism of action studies in pharmaceutical research. I have a strong, successful track record which has resulted in high quality data and numerous abstracts and publications.

Specialties: Translational models for drug discovery, target discovery and validation, High content imaging, biochemistry, pharmacology, and molecular and cellular biology. Mammalian primary neuronal/glial cell culture, cardiomyocytes, preclinical and clinical biomarker assays in whole blood.