Dr Karl Kieburtz profile photo

Karl Kieburtz, M.D.

Dr. Karl Kieburtz MD MPH is the Robert J Joynt Professor in Neurology and the Director of the Clinical & Translational Science Institute and also the Director of the Center for Human Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, NY. He also has appointments as Professor of Environmental Medicine and of Public Health Sciences, and serves as Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research.

His research career has focused on developing treatments for diseases with high unmet therapeutic needs, including HIV-related neurologic syndromes and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer and Parkinson disease. His research program has had continuous independent funding from the National Institutes of Health for over 20 years and he has served as the principal investigator on over two dozen multi-center clinical trials. His research papers have been cited by others over 10,000 times, according to the Web of Science, and his h-factor is over 50.

He has served as a consultant to the United States government through the FDA (serving on and chairing the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Advisory Committee), Veterans Administration (chairing the Scientific Evaluation Committee for the Cooperative Studies Program) and the National Institute of Neurologic Disorders and Stroke (serving on the clinical trials study section). He has served as an officer or board member for multiple international professional organizations including the American Neurological Association, the American Society for Experimental Therapeutics and the Movement Disorders Society, and has served as Associate Editor of the journals Neurology and Movement Disorders.

As the Director Clinical & Translational Science Institute he helps institutional investigators translate their clinical and bench-based research findings into potential human therapeutic agents.

For his roles as an educator he has received the University of Rochester Medical Center’s highest mentoring awards as well as a K24 award from the NIH for mentoring junior faculty. He also maintains an active clinical practice in neurology, primarily seeing patients with neurodegenerative disorders.

We chose Melior Discovery because they were responsive and cost effective. We are staying with them as a chosen scientific partner because of their thoughtful scientific input to experimental design and attention to detail. Their expertise and flexibility allowed us to quickly adapt the study design and evaluate additional outcome measures to pursue unexpected activity.
Sridharan Rajamani, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist
Gilead Sciences
I have been working with Melior on a number of projects over the course of a few years now. They have been a great partner throughout this time. The scientists whom I have worked with have been great problem-solvers and were customer focused.
Jay Lichter
Avalon Ventures
Melior provided State-of-the-art Preclinical Pharmacology Support for a period of nearly a year where a series of in vivo studies were completed on a weekly basis. The staff was extremely user-friendly and the operational processes were excellent. I can recommend Melior without reservation.
Richard DiMarchi, PhD
Cox Professor of Chemistry & Gill Chair in Biomolecular Sciences Indiana University, Department of Chemistry
Because Melior could do the orthotopic intracranial implants, we were able to do survival studies with brain tumor-bearing animals that were treated with our therapy, showing a beautiful survival with our agent versus control. Talk about something that gets your investors going! These beautiful survival curves with our agent versus control and visual photos are in all of our investor decks because… it's powerful.
Bruce Ruggeri, Ph.D.
Modifi Bio
Melior works in many therapeutic areas, like CNS, inflammatory disease, GI, cardiovascular, and oncology. I was very pleased that when it came to doing tumor studies, both subcutaneous and intracranial, they did them well. They reported on the studies on time and did the data analysis really well.
Bruce Ruggeri, Ph.D.
Modifi Bio
Their areas of expertise are extensive, and they are very experienced, responsive, and flexible in terms of how the study is run. Their pricing is reasonable, making them the best option for a young, not well-funded company like ours.
Maxine Gowen
Tamuro Bio
Melior’s team was very experienced and knowledgeable. They were always very open to suggestions and questions, spending a lot of time helping us feel comfortable with the study design. I would give them very high marks.
Maxine Gowen
Tamuro Bio
The most important factors in choosing to work with Melior were the fit between the tests they could run and our needs, as well as their tight budget and proximity. Melior was the best fit for our research goals.
Ira Spector
SFA Therapeutics