Kanneboyina Nagaraju received his bachelor's degree in veterinary medicine from the
College of Veterinary Sciences, Tirupati, India, in 1986; his master's degree in veterinary
immunology from the prestigious Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, in
1989; and his PhD in immunology from Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical
Sciences, Lucknow, India in 1995. Immediately after completing his PhD, he came to
the United States to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) in Bethesda, Md.
After completing this fellowship in 1999, he became a tenure-track assistant professor
in the Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md. In 2005, he joined the Research Center of Genetic
Medicine, Children's Research Institute of the Children's National Medical Center
(CNMC) and was appointed an associate professor of pediatrics at the George Washington
University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (GWSMHS) in Washington, D.C. In
2012, he was promoted to full professor with tenure in the Department of Integrative
Systems Biology, GWSMHS, and in 2015 served as the interim chair of the Department
of Integrative Systems Biology and director of the Research Center of Genetic Medicine
at CNMC prior to moving to Binghamton.
Nagaraju is an expert on translational research in autoimmune and genetic muscle diseases.
He has authored more than 120-refereed publications, along with several textbook chapters
on autoimmune muscle diseases. Apart from identifying pathogenic pathways and drug
targets in these neuromuscular disorders, he has also pioneered the generation of
novel inducible transgenic and knockout mouse models for muscle and neuromuscular
diseases. Early drug screening efforts in his laboratory in collaboration with
Eric Hoffman and John McCall led to the identification of powerful anti-inflammatory, membrane
stabilizing dissociated glucocorticoids. His group has demonstrated that these dissociated
steroids are highly efficacious in several inflammatory disease models. The lead compound,
vamorolone is currently in clinical trials for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Nagaraju has led international efforts to define reliable and sensitive tests for
drug efficacy in mouse models of neuromuscular diseases and directed a state-of-the
art preclinical drug-testing facility dedicated to neuromuscular disorders, and he
has performed over 75 preclinical drug trials in these mouse models since 2006. In
addition, he has mentored 20 postdoctoral and 7 doctoral fellows and students.
Since 2005, Nagaraju has received more than $11 million in grant support under various
mechanisms (R01, R21, U54, P50, K26) from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S.
Department of Defense and from a number of foundations (e.g., MDA, AFM, TMA, PPMD,
Arthritis Foundation). He currently serves as a member of medical and scientific advisory
boards of the Myositis Association, Muscular Dystrophy Association and Cure Duchenne,
as well as on the editorial boards of several specialty journals. Additionally, he
is one of the founding core preclinical experts on the TREAT-NMD Advisory Committee
for Therapeutics.
Nagaraju has co-founded two biotech companies, ReveraGen BioPharma, a biotech company focused on developing dissociated glucocorticoid therapies for
inflammatory diseases including muscular dystrophy, and
AGADA BioSciences, a preclinical drug screening and phenotyping company to facilitate development of
therapeutics for rare neuromuscular diseases.
Kanneboyina Nagaraju
Founding Chair, Pharmaceutical Sciences
Background
Education
Research Interests
Research Profile
School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences