Takahiro Yano

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Takahiro Yano, Ph.D. leads the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry effort at Vironika. He has extensive research experience in microbiology, biochemistry, and biophysics specializing in infectious diseases with more than 40 peer-reviewed publications in these areas. Dr Yano was a program leader at the JST ICORP in Tokyo, and a Senior Investigator at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.  His expertise is in drug discovery and development of High-Throughput Screening (HTS) campaigns targeting a microbial pathogens. He has developed novel enzyme-based, cell-based, and membrane-based HTS screening assays.

Nelson Delgado

Microbiology and Molecular Biology

Nelson Delgado, Ph.D., D(ABMM) is a trained and experienced medical microbiologist with significant expertise in molecular biology and laboratory management. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology. Dr. Delgado has extensive experience with high- consequence pathogens and Select Agents. He conducts high throughput screening of small molecule libraries for drug discovery at Vironika. Some of his projects include identification of compounds that target members of Herpesviridae and Coronaviridae.

Paul Lieberman

Paul Lieberman, Ph.D. is Founder of Vironika, and is a Professor of the Wistar Institute.  He is the Scientific Director of the Molecular Screening Facility at the Wistar Institute.  His expertise is in viral oncology and viral chromosome biology, and has investigated the biochemical and cellular biological properties of EBV and EBNA1 for over 15 years.  He was trained with Dr. Arnold Berk, Director of the MBI at UCLA, and with Drs. Gary and Diane Hayward at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in viral oncology and pharmacology.

Allen Reitz

Allen B. Reitz, Ph.D. received a Ph.D. with Prof. Murray Goodman at UC, San Diego, and conducted research at Johnson & Johnson for ~26 years.  Since 2008, he has been an entrepreneur, founding Fox Chase Chemical Diversity Center, Inc. (www.fc-cdci.com), among other small business research ventures.  He is also co-founder and President of the non-profit Pennsylvania Drug Discovery Institute, a regional service and outreach organization to promote biomedical research.  He is co-inventor of eight NCEs that have entered human clinical trials, including trigriluzole and mazapertine.