Ariana appoints Dr Mariana Kuras as chief technology officer

Ariana Pharma, a provider of “non-statistical” clinical data analysis technology across life science industries including the FDA, announces today that it has appointed Dr. Mariana Kuras as its chief technology officer.

Mariana brings to Ariana eight years of experience at Biosystems International. Whilst director of research, she was responsible for the development and validation of biomarker platform technologies in multi-million euro projects. These technologies included the application of antibodies to various diseases, including oncology and neurodegenerative diseases. Mariana and her team contributed towards the development of thousands of antibodies used on microarrays and to the patenting and publication of biomarker signatures and paving their route to market.

As a genomics and bioinformatics scientist at Pfizer Global Research and Development, Fresnes, France, Mariana has also been responsible for genomic studies. She has also been an independent scientific expert for the sixth and seventh framework of the European Commission and vice-chair for the life sciences panel for sixth PCRD of the research and training networks for the European Commission. She was awarded a PhD in biophysics and computational biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, USA.

“Mariana brings an exceptional level of both industrial and scientific experience to Ariana,” said Dr. Mohammad Afshar, president and CEO of Ariana Pharma. “Demand for our biomarker activity has continued to increase dramatically as a result of the drive in life science industries to personalized medicine. Mariana’s unique hands-on experience of both computational and experimental aspects of biomarker development will be a key asset to Ariana. She will help Ariana continue to meet our client’s growing needs.”

“Ariana has become one of the most promising international players in diagnostic and personalized medicine,” said Dr. Mariana Kuras. “By providing a validated solution to the challenge of combining heterogenous data from multiple sources with patient characteristics, Ariana will continue to grow as industry demand continues to increase and I am looking forward to adding my experience to the Ariana effort.”

KEM(R) – or Knowledge Extraction and Management – is an association rules-based (non-statistical) analytical technology that finds patient responder sub-populations and biomarker signatures that statistical methods are unable to detect. KEM optimizes clinical trial inclusion/exclusion criteria thereby lowering the number of patients needed to reach clinical endpoints and saving sponsors both time and money.