Dr. Xiaodong Li

Director of Immunology and Inflammation

Dr. Xiaodong Li, Ph.D., is a Director of Immunology & Inflammation at Melior. In this role, he has customary responsibilities for projects related to all aspects of immunology & inflammation undertaking Melior’s preclinical in vivo pharmacology studies.

Dr. Li has over twenty years’ experience in immunology and inflammation underlying many disease conditions such as colitis, asthma and microbial infections. He also has a deep knowledge of autoimmune diseases including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and allergic reactions. Dr. Li has authored or co-authored more than 20 peer-reviewed articles in high-profile biomedical journals and one approved patent in US.

Dr. Li earned his MD from Henan Medical University in China, his Ph.D. in molecular virology from the University of Helsinki, Finland and received his postdoctoral training in innate immunity and inflammation at the UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Prior to joining Melior he worked as an assistant professor at UT Health San Antonio where he led a research team to investigate the regulatory mechanisms of pulmonary inflammation caused by environmental allergens and respiratory viral infections.

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