Dr. Barker is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Cell Biology and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Virginia and the Co-Founder of two biotech Start-ups, SelSym Biotech and Vasarya Therapeutics, serving as CSO for the later. Dr. Barker received his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Physics in 1995 and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 2003. Dr. Barker’s research activities center extracellular matrix biology, mechanobiology, and biotechnology focused primarily on processes that drive tissue repair, regeneration, and fibrosis. Vasarya Therapeutics, a Charlottesville based Start-up, leverages the unique mechano-biology of disease to identify novel targets and develop drugs for tissue remodeling disorders like fibrosis and cancer, allowing for exceptional specificity to affected tissues. Our lead candidate, VSR-H5, engages a uniquely exposed and validated cryptic epitope within the fibrotic microenvironment, disrupting a key receptor and halting fibrotic progression in multiple disease models with exquisite specificity only to areas of fibrotic remodeling in human patient tissues.
