Patrick Knerr, PhD

Patrick J. Knerr, PhD, is the Vice President of Metabolic Translational Research at the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute (IBRI) in Indianapolis, where he leads a interdisciplinary drug discovery team pursuing next-generation therapeutics for obesity and related cardiometabolic disorders. He earned his BS in Biochemistry from the University of Delaware and his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, focusing on peptide medicinal chemistry. Prior to joining the IBRI, he honed his technical expertise at the Novo Nordisk Research Center Indianapolis, where he designed multiple long-acting, incretin-based poly-agonists that reached clinical investigation. He is a co-founder of Volari Therapeutics, established in 2025 to drive clinical development of novel obesity therapeutics discovered at the IBRI.