Sridaran Natesan MS, PhD

Dr. Sridaran Natesan is a Vice President- Strategic Initiatives & Scientific Relations (R&D) at Sanofi. He received his PhD degree in 1990 in Molecular Genetics from the University of Calgary in Canada and spent four years at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in New York as post-doctoral fellow. In 1994, Dr. Natesan joined Ariad Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a Senior Research Scientist and led a group that successfully developed a small molecule dimerizer dependent gene regulation system for potential use in gene therapy. In 1998, he joined Aventis Pharmaceuticals as a Principal Scientist and led a group focused on cell based screens to identify novel therapeutically relevant targets and compounds and managed a major stem cell program at the center. In 2003, Dr. Natesan was appointed as the Head of the Scientific Programs and member of the senior management team at the Aventis Cambridge Genomics Center. In 2005, Dr. Natesan was also in charge of leading a Molecular Pharmacology group focused on identification of targets and subsequent validation, compound screening and identification, optimization and deorphaning. During the last 10 years, Dr. Natesan established and managed several internal and external collaborations in several therapeutic areas including Oncology, CNS and metabolic diseases and contributed to the development of several targets and lead compounds.