Rio Boothello, Ph.D.

Rio joins our Translational Biology team as a Senior Scientist. In his new role he will be responsible for leading pharmacology studies to support discovery and translational biology at Strand. Prior to Strand, Rio was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia where he led the design and development of in vitro screens and in vivo efficacy, pharmacokinetic, mechanistic and toxicity evaluations of cancer stem cell targeting agents. During his postdoc he also developed cutting-edge three-dimensional models of human colorectal/liver normal vs. tumor organoid library strategy to enable personalized therapeutics and toxicity screening strategies. Rio achieved his Ph.D. from Virginia Commonwealth University where he obtained robust training on the execution of principles in drug discovery, design, and development. He also holds a Bachelor’s of pharmaceutical sciences degree from University of Mumbai.