Leadership Team

Our integrated leadership team, comprised of several seasoned Biopharmaceutical industry experts, has a shared purpose and vision to address many of the challenges associated with vaccine development.  The Team has a proven track record of "Concept to Clinic" stewardship, for a diverse portfolio of Vaccine Products and clinical candidates.

A. Krishna Prasad, Ph. D.
​Founder & President

Dr. Krishna Prasad, the founder of Citranvi® Biosciences, is a recognized industry leader in Vaccine Development.  He joined Wyeth-Lederle Vaccines and Pediatrics in 1998, which later became Pfizer.  He has been named as an inventor or co-inventor in more than 150 granted patents, world-wide, which played a significant role towards the development and protection of Pfizer’s diverse conjugate vaccine intellectual property portfolio.  Dr. Prasad functioned as the Director of Vaccine Research and Development, at Pfizer. His responsibilities included managing and directing large teams with expertise in key technical functions and methods for vaccine candidate identification, production, characterization, assay development and testing of clinical trial materials. 
During his 20 years tenure at Wyeth/Pfizer, he successfully led many innovative and complex multi-component vaccine candidates through all stages of pre-clinical and clinical development through commercial licensure, notably Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (Prevnar-13®), meningococcal (Meningitec®); and many clinical candidates such as staphylococcal, Group B Streptococcus, GBS, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and A-β-Peptide-CRM197 conjugate immunotherapeutic against Alzheimer's Disease.  Dr. Prasad is an expert in design, research, early and late phase clinical development, scale-up, technology transfer, clinical trial material manufacturing under cGMP, trouble-shooting and commercialization of vaccines.  This includes handling CMC regulatory issues directly with various boards of health, including FDA.

James Cowell, Ph. D.
Advisor

Dr. James Cowell has 40 years of professional experience in the non-clinical aspects of biological product development including technology assessment, business development, research, product & process development, technology transfer, quality control, and regulatory affairs.  This experience includes the 8 years at the FDA (CBER), 16 years in industry at both small (Praxis Biologics) and large companies (Lederle-Praxis, Wyeth-Lederle and Wyeth), 5 years as a consultant with the Biologics Consulting Group, and 11 years as an independent consultant. While at the FDA and in the biotech/vaccine industry much of the work was with purified capsular polysaccharide-protein conjugates, purified LOS-protein conjugates, peptide-protein conjugates, purified native and recombinant proteins, live attenuated viral and bacterial organisms and with vectors such as attenuated Salmonella.  
 
Dr. Cowell functioned as the Assistant VP of Bacterial and Viral Vaccine Development, where he had the responsibility for managing and directing departments with expertise in all the technical functions and methods for vaccine candidate identification and for GMP biological product production, characterization, formulation, and assay development and QC testing of clinical trial materials. 
 
Dr. Cowell was actively involved in the development of acellular pertussis vaccines, bacterial conjugate vaccines for Haemophilus influenzae type b (HibTiter), Neisseria meningitidis type C (Meningitec), and Streptococcus pneumoniae (7v and 13v)..  All of these vaccines became successful commercial products with the licensure of HibTiter in 1988, Acel-Immune (DTaP) in 1991, Meningitec in 1999, Prevnar 7v in 2000 and Prevnar 13v in 2010.  All have been very important for the control of the infectious diseases caused by these bacteria and have made major contributions to improving global public health.
 
As an independent consultant Dr. Cowell has continued to provide product development and CMC advice to companies pursuing new conjugate vaccines and cancer vaccine development issues and small drug-protein conjugate vaccines for drug addiction. He provided product development and CMC advice for the development of methamphetamine-protein conjugate vaccines to University of Arkansas. He provided technology transfer, manufacturing (CMC), and general regulatory advice to Heat Biologics, Chapel Hill, NC  for the development of an allogeneic whole cell cancer vaccine for NSCLC. 
 
Dr. Cowell has a broad range of experience across many scientific areas and technologies and regulatory fields that he can utilize to provide  sound advice for product development of many different types of biotech and vaccine products.  

Phil Fernsten, Ph. D.
​Vice President, Immunology

​​Dr. Philip Fernsten served as Senior Director, Vaccine Research and Early Development at Wyeth Vaccines Research and Pfizer and Pfizer Vaccine Research, after joining Wyeth-Lederle Vaccines and Pediatrics in 1998.  He has a very broad background in vaccine research and early clinical development and contributed to a number of bacterial and viral vaccine programs, five of which (Prevnar®, Meningitec®, FluMist®, Prevnar 13®, and Trumenba®) resulted in successful product launches. 
 
Dr. Fernsten participated extensively in discovery and preclinical research and in the development of scientific and commercial strategies for a number of other vaccine programs, including S. aureus, A-β-peptide conjugate, and pediatric combination vaccines; led early clinical science subteams; and served as the technical interface with external scientific leaders and collaborators for serological assay-related issues.  He developed and evaluated preclinical models of immunogenicity and protection and oversaw evaluation and development of new platform technologies and strategies to increase the quality and efficiency of serological assessments of vaccine antigen immunogenicity in preclinical and clinical vaccine trials, and spearheaded the discovery and development of leading edge assay technologies that were accepted by world health thought leaders in vaccines and biologics..  He was responsible for assay development, documentation, validation, transfer to compliant internal throughput teams and external contract laboratories, and high-throughput of clinical assays. 
 
Dr. Fernsten has extensive experience with regulatory compliance and documentation and with regulatory writing, including preclinical sections of IND/CTA filings and BLA submission dossiers for the US, Europe, and Japan, as well as drafting responses to questions from regulatory authorities and Boards of Health from these countries.  He was a key member of the team responsible for the successful launch of Prevnar in Japan.  He has overseen laboratory operations and documentation programs in internal laboratories and monitored the performance of external contracted facilities to ensure compliance with internal and external regulatory expectations (GLP, GCP, etc.) and safety guidelines.  He provides key experience with quality and regulatory requirements associated with successful agency submissions. 
 
Prior to joining Wyeth-Lederle Vaccines, Dr. Fernsten carried out basic research in cancer and autoimmunity at the Scripps Research Institute, The National Cancer Institute, and the University of North Carolina and holds a PhD in immunology from Duke University.

Robert Corder, PhD
Advisor,  Development & Quality

Dr. Robert Corder has over 30 years of vaccine experience with specific expertise in the development of new vaccine processes, designing scale up, and developing cGMP manufacture practices for the production of clinical trial materials and commercial vaccines.   Most recently, Dr. Corder was Senior Director of Quality at Lederle/Wyeth/Pfizer Vaccines. During his 23 years at Lederle/Wyeth/Pfizer, he developed the upstream, manufacturing processes for four licensed products including pnuemococcal (Prevnar®) and meningococcal conjugate vaccines.  He is experienced in technology transfer from lab scale to full scale manufacturing, leading development of fermentation and recovery processes from bench scale to full-scale production for Prevnar®, Streptococcus pneumoniae conjugate vaccine, Neisseria meningitidis serogroup C conjugate vaccine (Meningitec®), and Meningococcal serogroup B vaccine (Trumenba®).  Dr. Corder received his PhD in microbiology from The Ohio State University.

Clifford Snapper, MD
​Vice President

Prof. Clifford Snapper received his MD degree from Albany Medical College in 1981. He served as a medical intern in Internal Medicine at Albany Medical Center Hospital and completed his residency in pathology at Cornell-N.Y. Hospital with board certification. He trained in basic immunology research as a medical staff fellow in the Laboratory of Immunology at the NIH between 1985-1988. Dr. Snapper subsequently worked in the Department of Pathology at the Uniformed Services University from 1988-2018 as a tenured full professor with adjunct appointments in the Cell and Molecular Biology graduate program, the Emerging Infectious Diseases graduate program, and the Department of Medicine. He served as head of the Institute for Vaccine Research and co-directed the Center for Immunology and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Snapper held continuous NIH research funding for basic and translational research studies on the regulation of humoral immunity, including responses to bacterial and viral pathogens, as well as vaccine development. During his tenure at USUHS, he taught basic pathology to medical students, immunology to graduate students and supervised graduate students for their Ph.D. degrees. He is co-inventor on 8 patents. Dr. Snapper published 109 original research papers in peer-reviewed journals and 26 invited reviews and book chapters. His awards include the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Developing Investigator Award, Immunopharmacology of Allergic Diseases, The Jeffrey Modell Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, the Henry Wu Award for Excellence in Basic Research, Outstanding Biomedical Graduate Educator Award, and several awards for outstanding pathology laboratory instructor. 


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Charles Knirsch, MD, MPH
​Advisor, Clinical Development
and ​Epidemiology

Dr. Charles Knirsch is an internationally well-recognized infectious disease physician and epidemiologist with 20+ years vaccine and infectious disease diseases research and development experience in industry.  He obtained his MD degree from McGill University in 1985.  He was a post-doctoral student at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine prior to serving as a clinical fellow, research fellow, and Asst. Professor at Columbia University where he also obtained his MPH in Epidemiology in 1995. He served as Physician-in-charge of the Washington Heights tuberculosis clinic in the New York City Department of Health.  He led the integration of epidemiology with innovative medical informatics research, molecular epidemiology into applied disease management at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. He conducted phase 2/3 trials for anti-retroviral agent combination therapy trials at Columbia University. He was also the co-director of parasitic diseases courses and the co-editor of Parasitic Diseases, a widely used introductory text for clinicians and medical students. He is board certified from the American Board of Internal Medicine and infectious diseases. He serves in the special emphasis panel reviews board of NIH.
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Kevin O'Neill
​Advisor, Business Strategy

Kevin O’Neill is a successful commercial leader and strategist in the vaccine industry. Kevin has deep expertise in vaccine commercialization strategy for vaccines targeting infectious diseases.  He has developed strategies for pathogens ranging from CMV, dengue, flu, meningitis, norovirus, pneumococcus, Staph A, C. diff., RSV, TB and others.   Kevin has successfully collaborated with research and clinical teams to shape the development of vaccine assets.  Kevin’s expertise in navigating the policy and pricing environments of vaccines has led to commercial success on multiple launches.  As Vice President and Global Business Manager of Wyeth / Pfizer Vaccines, Mr. O’Neill also led the global commercialization effort for Prevnar® 13, the world’s highest selling vaccine. Prior to that experience Mr. O’Neill led the selling efforts during the launch of Flumist®. Mr. O’Neill also led the launch effort of Protonix, a blockbuster proton pump inhibitor and managed the business to in excess of $2.5 billion annually.  Kevin has worked closely with vaccine launch teams from leading vaccine manufacturers and biotech companies. Kevin continues to consult with vaccine developers and academic leaders on strategies for new vaccines.

Luke Handke, PhD
​Advisor, Molecular Biology

Dr. Luke Handke holds a Ph.D. in Pathology and Microbiology from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.  Following postdoctoral studies in Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University, he joined the Vaccine Research and Development Department at Wyeth.  During his 10 years at Wyeth/Pfizer, Dr. Handke was involved in discovery and pre-clinical research activities for several of the company’s innovative vaccine candidates, including the S. aureus, S. agalactiae, N. meningitidis, and respiratory syncytial virus vaccine programs.  During this time, he also led and coordinated the research activities of a team of molecular biologists.  Dr. Handke brings his substantial well-rounded cross-disciplinary skills and expertise comprising molecular biology, microbial genetics, cell culture, protein expression and purification, fermentation, and assay development to Citranvi. ​
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