Dr Kristin Bedard | Director and Head of Virology
Kineta Inc

Dr. Kristin Bedard leads Kineta’s virology research program, including both antiviral drug discovery and vaccine programs. She is a skilled molecular virologist with extensive training in both DNA and RNA viruses as well as cancer biology. Under her direction, Kineta established the AViiD platform for identifying novel innate immune modulators and identified five novel antiviral or vaccine adjuvant drug classes. Dr. Bedard received her undergraduate degrees in Microbiology and Biochemistry at Pennsylvania State University and earned a PhD degree in Molecular Virology from University of California, Irvine where she studied the host cell- virus interactions of RNA viruses. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Bedard’s work has led to three highly regarded NIH research grants and four NIH contracts for therapeutics and vaccine adjuvants, resulting in more $55 million of research funding for Kineta and our collaborators. She is the co-inventor on fifteen filed U.S. patent applications for novel classes of antiviral drugs and corresponding methods of identification. Her work has led to novel drugs that are effective at treating and preventing high priority infections including respiratory viruses, chronic hepatitis viruses and emerging pathogens such as Ebola, Dengue and Lassa Fever and is instrumental in shifting the paradigm of adjuvant and antiviral drug development strategies.