Who We Are
We are skilled physician scientists passionate about developing drugs, teamwork, integrity and commitment to timelines.
Our skill comes from formal training and the great clients we have worked with. We have not stopped learning!!
While we work across therapeutic areas, we are particularly passionate about drugs that make a difference. We seek to tread a humanitarian path, focusing on rare diseases, neglected diseases, children and orphan diseases. We badly wish to relieve the suffering of patients with diseases that have no alternate treatments.
We appreciate that success in drug development requires integrating the varied expertise of disparate scientific disciplines (e.g. toxicology, clinical pharmacology, biostatistics) into a meaningful whole. We bring a collaborative and espirit de corps approach to our partners’ development programs, in line with our zeal to swiftly bring to market medicines, particularly for rare and orphan diseases.
We are passionate about integrity. To us, it is non-negotiable – a fundamental value. We adhere to the highest ethical standards. We do the right thing even when no one is watching!
Client timelines are critical for us. The holiday season or the weekend matters little if it comes in the way of meeting project timelines. A deadline is sacrosanct, come hell or high water!!
RxMD Team
Abhijeeth Chandrasekaran, M.D.
Abhijeeth Chandrasekaran, a key member of RxMD’s drug development team for over a decade, is an experienced physician and licensed pathologist. At RxMD, Abhijeeth has helped design and conduct phase 1 to 3 studies across therapeutic domains for mid-size and big (global top 5) pharmaceuticals. He has successfully led projects in varied environments amongst global stakeholders and has comprehensive experience in delivering high quality output under tight timelines. Abhijeeth’s development experience has included work on cutting edge projects in gene and cell therapy, and due diligence of over 40 candidate new molecular entities. As a member of RxMD’s client team, Abhijeeth has also made significant contributions in drug safety projects.
Prior to RxMD, Abhijeeth was Registrar – Pathology, at the Harkisondas Nurrotumdas Hospital and Research Center, a leading hospital in Mumbai. India. Abhijeeth holds a degree in medicine from the Stanley Medical College, Chennai, India.
Naresh Hegde has been a part of RxMD virtually from the moment of creation. A graduate in Business from the University of Mumbai, India, Naresh joined RxMD after brief stints in journalism and marketing. His responsibilities involve day-to-day operations of RxMD. This includes the management of all of RxMD’s vendor partners in Toxicology, Clinical Pharmacology, Data Management and Biostatistics.
Naresh Hegde
Prashant Hiwarkar, M.D.
Prashant Hiwarkar, is a physician-scientist trained in the UK and India. Prashant followed up his initial training in India with a Membership of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (MRCPCH) and Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath) in Clinical Hematology. He also completed a PhD in Cellular Immunology with the University College London.
Prashant’s experience includes research training in in vivo modelling, tumor imaging, T-cell biology, gene expression profiling (including analysis using R and Bioconductor), flow cytometry, FACS sorting, tissue culture, retroviral transduction, cytokine and cell proliferation assays, and immunofluorescence imaging.
Prashant has served as an Investigator on industry-sponsored and academic trials evaluating graft-versus-leukemia effect, pediatric leukemia in different phases of drug development, and an FIH study for congenital neutropenia. He also served as a key opinion leader for a pediatric ALL CAR-T cell program, CMV-specific T cells and a molecule for treating adenovirus.
Prashant has also served as Consultant in Pediatric Hematology and Blood and Marrow transplantation in leading hospitals in the UK.
Prashant is a reviewer for several medical journals and has been published extensively as corresponding author in numerous high impact factor journals including Bone Marrow Transplantation, Blood Advances, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: British Journal of Haematology, Leukemia, Blood, and Lancet Haematology.
Vis Niranjan is an internationally renowned physician scientist. He founded RxMD after a clinical career spanning more than a decade. Prior to RxMD, he served as Director of the Intensive Care Unit at the University Hospital in Newark, NJ, U.S.A. After earning a degree in Medicine from the University of Mumbai, India, and a Fellowship at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, Australia, Vis followed this up with a U.S. Board Certification in Pediatric Critical Care (University of Texas South West Medical Center, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.) and post-doctoral training in Molecular Biology (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Dallas, TX).
Vis’ vast drug development expertise encompasses both efficacy and safety across therapeutic areas. His forte is translational medicine – connecting the dots from discovery through to commercialization. Vis has considerable experience in the development and commercialization of drugs for the U.S. and EU markets across indications and populations (pediatrics). Not surprisingly he has taken on several critical roles – Chief Medical Officer; Vice-President, Development; Member, Scientific Advisory Board; Mentor to start-ups; etc.
Vis(wanathan) Niranjan, M.D.
Sumitra Niranjan, M.D.
Dr. Sumitra Niranjan is a U.S. Board-certified Pathologist.
Prior to RxMD, Sumitra served as Director, Laboratory Services, at Childs Trust Hospital, Chennai, India, a not-for-profit hospital, widely regarded as among the best pediatric hospitals in Southern India. Prior to this, Sumitra completed her residency and served as Chief Resident, Pathology, at the St. Barnabas Health Care System, Livingston, NJ, U.S.A. Sumitra also underwent training in cytology at the prestigious Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, U.S.A., and in forensic medicine at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. Sumitra took her degree in medicine from the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangalore, India.
Over the years, a number of RxMD drug safety projects have been brought to successful fruition on the back of Sumitra’s strong medical and forensic skills, and extensive experience, particularly in the area of pathology.
Pavithra Ramesh holds a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy and a post-graduate degree in Clinical Research. Over her decade long association with RxMD, Pavithra has worked on the execution of varied projects in drug development, drug safety and data management for several of RxMD’s clients. She has assimilated the best industry practices and established RxMD’s SOPs.
Pavithra’s team ensures RxMD staff compliance with SOPs, U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), applicable local laws, training, quality assurance and improvement and continuing education programs. Her team oversees the development of study protocols, informed consent forms, case report forms, edit checks and takes ownership of user acceptance testing, blinded data review, data visualization, coding review, narrative writing, bioinformatics and literature review. Pavithra ensures that RxMD is able to execute on the strategy.
Pavithra Ramesh, B.Pharm, M.Sc
Our Clientele
We have worked for U.S. and EU-based big pharma & biotech, for small molecules, biologics & cell therapy, across indications.
