Smriti Iyengar, Ph.D.

Smriti Iyengar, Ph.D., is Program Director for the newly formed Preclinical Screening Platform for Pain (PSPP) program, in the Division of Translational Research, NINDS.  She is a neuroscientist with extensive research and drug development experience focused on neuro-disorders including pain and headache.  Prior to joining NINDS, she was an adjunct Senior Research Professor in the Department of Anesthesia, Indiana University School of Medicine, where her research interests included pain and headache mechanisms and neuroimmune interactions following traumatic brain injury as well as mechanisms leading to neuropathic pain. She was formerly at Eli Lilly and Company, and prior to that at G.D. Searle and Company, Schering-Plough Inc. and Ciba Geigy.  Her drug discovery expertise includes target, lead and clinical candidate identification and characterization as well as translational and clinical development, regulatory strategy, launch and commercialization.  She played a key role in the development of duloxetine for pain and depression and has made significant contributions to >20 clinical candidates across a range of neuroscience targets, including CGRP and 5HT1F.  Her postdoctoral training was at Rutgers University as a Charles and Johanna Busch Fellow in the Dept. of Physiology and Neuroscience, with her research focused on central regulation of opioid function and central regulation of neuroendocrine function including the HPA axis and stress. She received her Ph.D. from M.S. University of Baroda, India, where she worked on the neurochemical basis of behavior in the developing brain. She has served as a member of several  permanent and ad-hoc national and international committees established to evaluate research issues and to accelerate translational medicine in the area of pain, including ACTTION, IMMPACT, IMI Europain, TI Pharma translational pharmacology pain consortium and the Imaging consortium for drug development,  as well as a member of  several grant committees and cross functional strategy committees in neuroscience and pain. She is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.