Leadership Profile
ANUMANTHA G. KANTHASAMY
Founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Anumantha G. Kanthasamy has over 30 years of research experience in neuroscience, pharmacology, and toxicology. Dr. Kanthasamy is also Distinguished Professor, Linda Lloyd Endowed Chair and Eminent Scholar in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Iowa State University. He is the founding director of the Iowa Center for Advanced Neurotoxicology (ICAN). Prior to joining ISU, he was a faculty member in the Department of Neurology, University of California, Irvine, CA, and was a researcher at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. He has worked as a scientist in various pharmaceutical industries.
He has been directing NIH-funded basic science research programs in neuroscience and neurotoxicology for over 35 years. Currently, Dr. Kanthasamy’s research is focused primarily in the areas of neuropharmacology and neurotoxicology, His major study emphasis is on cellular and molecular mechanisms associated with oxidative cell death signaling pathways as they relate to the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease and other associated neurological disorders. In support of the neuronpharmacological and toxicological research being conducted at ISU, Dr. Kanthasamy has secured several million dollars in funding from the National Institute of Health and other funding agencies. Also, he has received contracts from many pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies including Merck KGaA and Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH&Co KG., Biotherapeutix, and Hematech. Dr. Kanthasamy is a prolific author, with more than 200 peer reviewed published research papers, and is a frequent invited lecturer at numerous conferences worldwide. At ISU, Dr. Kanthasamy teaches toxicology and pharmacology courses to graduate students and veterinary medical students. He regularly serves on a variety of prestigious panels including NIH study section review panels and other grant review committees.
Dr. Kanthasamy’s career is distinguished by a long list of awards, honors and recognitions he has received over the years. He also maintains memberships in many preeminent professional organizations including the Society of Toxicology, Society for Neuroscience, American Society of Pharmacology Experimental Therapeutics, and International Neurochemistry Society. He holds several patents and is the primary patent holder for EcN technology.
VELLAREDDY ANANTHARAM
Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Operating Officer
Dr. Vellareddy Anantharam has over 35 years of research experience in molecular neurobiology, pharmacology and toxicology in both the academic and corporate sectors. He has more than 180 published research papers to his credit. As a pharmacology faculty at the Univ. of Massachusetts Medical Center (1990-95) his major focus here was to study the effect of ethanol and local anesthetics on Neuronal ligand-gated and ion-gated channels. Subsequently, he joined the research team headed by Dr. Alan J Tobin, Director of Brain Research Institute, UCLA (1995-97). His team focused on engineering immortalized neuronal cell lines to express GAD65 and produce GABA for transplantation experiments in animal models of Epilepsy, Parkinson’s and Huntington disease.
In his position as a senior scientist (1997-99), Dr. Anantharam was instrumental in developing high-throughput pharmacological screening and cellular response measuring instruments at Axiom Biotechnologies Inc. (merged with Sequenom Inc.). In 1999 he won the employee of the year award. Since, 2000, he is an affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Iowa State University. At ISU, Dr. Anantharam’s research focuses on areas of neurodegenerative diseases and neurotoxicology. In 2006, he co-founded PK Bio. In 2008, he received NIH SBIR phase I funding for development of Novel Therapeutic Agents for Parkinson’s’ disease. In 2008, he also received the Iowa Technological Commercialization Fellowship Award. In 2009 he also received funding from Grow Iowa Value Fund and Institute for Physical Research and Technology from the State of Iowa for syntheses and screening of novel drugs for PD. He was recently awarded two NIH/NINDS SBIR P1 grants in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019. Dr. Anantharam began his post-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins Medical School in the laboratory of Professor Peter C Maloney. He received Doctoral degrees in Molecular Biophysics from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He has also 180 peer reviewed publications and has also served NIH study section review panels and other grant review committees.