Executive Summary
Jonathan (Jon) Larkin, PhD, is a Senior Partner at The Bracken Group and President and Founder of SynOA Therapeutics. He is a drug developer with more than 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry, most of it at GSK, where he shaped corporate strategy for osteoarthritis and led a team that discovered disease-modifying therapeutics. Two of those efforts, a monoclonal antibody and a small molecule, reached candidate selection.
Jon then moved into clinical development as an Early Development Leader, drafting protocols, informed consents, investigator brochures, and IND submissions, and led biomarker strategy for four clinical projects. He conceived and secured €17.5 million for the IMI APPROACH consortium and coordinated its 25 academic and industry partners for seven years, including a five-center, 300-patient study to characterize osteoarthritis patient subsets. He also chaired an Innovate UK stratified medicine consortium and served as an industry partner on the FNIH OA Biomarkers Consortium.
He trained as a viral immunologist, earning his PhD in Pathology and Cell Biology at Thomas Jefferson University, where he developed a novel hepatitis B virus SCID mouse model, before postdoctoral work on hepatitis C at Eli Lilly and innate immunity at Indiana University.
Featured Podcast Episodes
Areas of Expertise
Osteoarthritis Drug Development
Disease-modifying osteoarthritis therapeutics, biologic and small molecule, from target validation through candidate selection.
Translational Biomarkers
Target engagement and pharmacodynamic biomarkers, including a companion lab-based assay, with biomarker strategy for four clinical projects.
Early Clinical Development
Clinical protocols, informed consents, investigator brochures, IND submissions, and study conduct under GCP.
Patient Stratification
Phenotypes and molecular endotypes that identify osteoarthritis patient subsets for stratified experimental medicine.
Consortium Leadership
Conceiving, funding, and running public-private consortia across IMI, Innovate UK, and the FNIH Biomarkers Consortium.
Preclinical Pharmacology
PK/PD, biodistribution, and route of administration studies in rodent, canine, and NHP models to support IND filings.
