Dr Niranjan Sardesai | COO
Inovio

Dr. Sardesai has broad development and consulting experience in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and in particular vaccine product development.  He served as Sr. Vice President, Research & Development at Inovio Pharmaceuticals before being promoted to his current position as Inovio’s Chief Operating Officer.  Dr. Sardesai is responsible for leading the company’s corporate development function and product development programs in infectious disease and cancer vaccines and vaccine delivery systems.  Programs under his leadership include candidate infectious disease vaccines for HIV, influenza, dengue, chikungunya, malaria, HBV, and HCV and cancer vaccines for cervical and prostate cancer.  He currently serves as the PI on an NIAID funded HVDDT contract for the development of HIV vaccines, a MVI-PATH funded program for the development of malaria vaccines and co-PI on a PA-CURE grant for the development of HCV vaccines.  Prior to VGX, Dr. Sardesai was the Founder and President of NVision Consulting Inc., a strategy consulting firm focused on entrepreneurial companies in the biopharma  /lifesciences industry, and he served as Director R&D at Fujirebio Diagnostics, Inc. At FDI, Dr. Sardesai oversaw all aspects of R&D activities and expansion of the oncology portfolio. Products developed under his leadership include new-to-the-world tests for mesothelioma (MESOMARK™), bladder cancer and a multi-marker test for ovarian cancer. Dr. Sardesai also served as Senior Scientist at IGEN International, Inc., where his group helped develop a high-throughput screening platform for drug-discovery.   He has authored over 75 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters, delivered over 100 invited talks and lectures, and filed several patents. Dr. Sardesai received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the recipient of the Shils-Zeidman Award in Entrepreneurship. He completed fellowships at Scripps Research Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Sardesai received his bachelors and masters in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.  He lives in Blue Bell, PA with his wife and their two sons they are raising to be responsible global citizens.