Jon C. Mirsalis, Ph.D., DABT, has more than 35 years of
experience in the management and conduct of preclinical
development projects for the translation of pharmaceutical
products, vaccines, and medical devices into human clinical
trials. A large portion of his career has focused on accelerating
development of therapies for infectious diseases and biothreat
agents, including fast-tracking therapies for influenza, Ebola,
plague, anthrax TB and drug-resistant bacteria.Mirsalis joined
SRI in 1981 as a staff scientist, and subsequently served as a program
director, department director, laboratory director, associate director, and managing
director. He currently serves as VP of SRI’s Translational Development Section, a 90-
person group that is the largest contractor of preclinical services to the National
Institutes of Health.
Mirsalis has a broad background in drug development and has personally been
involved in the development of more than 70 therapeutics that have
entered clinical trials. Approximately 15 have achieved market approval. He
has also published extensively in the areas of genetic toxicology,
mechanisms of carcinogenesis, development of therapeutics for cancer and
infectious disease, and use of transgenic animals; he is the author of more than 200
publications, book chapters, and abstracts.
Before joining SRI, Mirsalis was a postdoctoral fellow at the Chemical
Industry Institute of Toxicology, where he developed the in vivo-in vitro hepatocyte
DNA repair assay, which is now used as a screen to identify potential carcinogens by
government and industry. Mirsalis regularly lectures on drug development at the
University of California-San Francisco, on global health at Notre Dame
University and on biosecurity at Stanford University. He recently completed two
terms as Chair of the Board of Directors of the California Biomedical Research
Association and in 2020 he joined the Board of the National Association of
Biomedical Research. He currently serves on the Advisory Council for the
Critical Path Institute’s Predictive Safety Testing Consortium (PSTC) and the
Medical CBRN Defense Consortium (MCDC). He has previously served on the Board
of Scientific Councilors for the National Toxicology Program and the FDA’s Over-the-
Counter Product Review Committee.
Mirsalis received his B.S. degree in zoology/molecular biology from Kent
State University, his M.S. degree in genetics from North Carolina State University,
and holds Ph.D. degrees in toxicology and genetics from North Carolina State
University. He has been certified by the American Board of Toxicology since 1983.
He was named an SRI Fellow in 2014.