Saravanan Karumbayaram

Saravanan (Saran) Karumbayaram, M. Pharm., Ph.D., is a Biologist and CMC reviewer at the Division of Cell and Gene Therapy at the FDA since 2019. He earned his bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences and master’s degree in pharmaceutical biotechnology from The Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University in India in 1995 and 1997, respectively. He earned his doctorate from the University of Bonn, Germany in 2005 and subsequently, he completed his postdoctoral research from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2009. He joined as an adjunct faculty at the Eli and Edythe Broad Stem Cell Research Center at UCLA (2010-2019), and eventually became an Adjunct Professor at the center in 2018. During his time at Uni Bonn and UCLA, his research focused on metachromatic leukodystrophy and methods for the generation of pluripotent stem cells and its differentiation into cells of the ectodermal lineage, especially to study amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) using motor neurons, and age-related macular degeneration using retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells. He established the iPSC core laboratory at UCLA and developed methods for the clinical translation of induced pluripotent stem cells derived drug products.