Robert P. Ricciardi, Ph.D.

Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Robert Ricciardi is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is a Graduate Group Chairman. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brandeis University and Harvard Medical School in the Department of Biological Chemistry where he was awarded Fellowships by the American Cancer Society, National Institutes of Health and the Charles A. King Trust. He developed one of the first genomic technologies, which was used widely to discover and map many hundreds of genes by identifying the proteins they encode. Most of Dr. Ricciardi’s research has centered on understanding basic mechanisms of cancer. He identified one of the first gene activators from a virus that can make cells cancerous by enabling them to escape the immune system. These studies, in turn, disclosed a key mechanism that modulates NF-kappa-B, the master regulator of the immune system.

Dr. Ricciardi has also developed and received patents on recombinant delivery vectors for potential use as vaccines and gene therapy. In addition, Dr. Ricciardi discovered new replication proteins from human viruses that cause cancer (KSHV) and possibly chronic fatigue (HHV-6). He is applying a rapid mechanistic assay he developed (US Patent) that is being used to screen tens of thousands of compounds from chemical libraries in order to discover therapeutics that will inhibit these and other disease related human viruses. Dr. Ricciardi has served as a consultant to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Smith Kline Pharmaceuticals, the NIH, and was awarded a NATO Visiting Professorship at Ferrara Medical School and has been an invitational speaker at numerous international scientific meetings and universities. He has authored 93 publications.