Sharad K. Verma PhD

Sharad K. Verma, PhD, is the Director of Research and Development for the Neurofibromatosis Therapy Acceleration Program (NTAP), and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology, at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In these roles, Dr. Verma oversees basic science and translational initiatives as they pertain to the discovery and development of therapeutics for the treatment of plexiform and cutaneous neurofibromas.

Before joining Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Verma was in the pharmaceutical industry for over 14 years first working at Bayer (5 yrs), and later GlaxoSmithKline (9+ years), serving in various R&D leadership roles in the discovery and clinical development of oncology therapeutics. Dr. Verma was a member of multiple project teams spanning the areas of signal transduction, cancer epigenetics, and immuno-oncology, which delivered a total of 6 clinical development candidates (including one that is now FDA approved).

Dr. Verma’s core expertise is in the development of small molecule drugs (medicinal chemistry, chemical synthesis, structure based drug design), and led the chemical identification of the first reported on-target small molecule inhibitors of the epigenetic target EZH2.

Additional areas of experience include drug delivery, chemical biology, R&D project management, and preclinical/early clinical development. Dr. Verma is a reviewer for multiple scientific journals, scientific advisor for multiple scientific conferences, and a reviewer on the NIH study section panels for Drug Discovery for the Nervous system, and Chemical Molecular Probes.