High-Impact Consulting for Early Discovery & Beyond
High-Impact Consulting
for Early Discovery and Beyond
Aug·ment (verb):
To make something greater by adding to it!
Xyzagen augments your drug development team with specialized expertise and hands-on support. As a boutique organization, our clients work directly with senior experts, ensuring that their most critical decisions are backed by scientific rigor and regulatory insight.
At our core, we are a boutique PK consultancy and contract research organization (CRO) with in-house wet labs and rodent vivarium facilities. We integrate Pharmacokinetics (PK) and Model-Informed Drug Development (MIDD) into our proprietary First-in-Rat® and First-in-Mouse® discovery platforms and philosophy, making us the ideal partner from early discovery through late development. Beyond discovery, we provide advanced clinical pharmacology, quantitative MIDD, and regulatory strategy and writing support to strengthen programs through pivotal stages.
To date, we have partnered with over 100 life science innovators—from NIH-funded startups to mid-size pharma and venture-backed biotechs. Our depth in pharmacology and PK enables clients to expand their capabilities during the most critical moments, from candidate selection and Pre-IND planning to clinical development and NDA submissions.
Our Expertise
We bring specialized experience in Ophthalmology and Neurology/Pain, two of the most complex therapeutic areas in drug development. But our strength goes beyond therapeutic focus: our core expertise lies in nonclinical PK/ADME and safety, clinical pharmacology, modeling and simulation, and behavioral pharmacology. The pharmacokinetic knowledge areas are therapeutic-area agnostic, meaning you benefit from the same depth of insight no matter where your program is headed. But with core strengths and experience in certain therapeutic areas, we bring a deeper insight based on decades of development experience in these areas.
Our Story
Xyzagen was founded as an idea and extension of what our founder had been involved with all along: early discovery pharmacology, bioanalysis, and pharmacokinetics to regulated GLP toxicokinetics/bioanalysis and clinical pharmacology; from bench to bedside. We’re not focused on high-throughput screening, deep AI, or other marketing gimmicks. Our secret sauce is experience and knowing how to design nonclinical and clinical pharmacology solutions that provide both regulatory rigor and the scientific knowledge needed to move programs forward to the next value inflection point. After leaving Big Pharma, our founder built bioanalytical and pharmacokinetic capacity at two early-stage biotech companies in the RTP area. This integration of early bioanalysis and in vivo pharmacokinetics helped move discovery programs forward.
We believe that running a rodent or nonrodent PK study should be straightforward—but in reality, it pulls together four critical disciplines: chemistry and formulation development, animal husbandry and sample collection, bioanalytical sciences, and pharmacokinetics. Each of these disciplines is essential to understanding the pharmacokinetics and pharmacology of a drug, and any one component done poorly can compromise interpretation of the exposure–response relationship. These studies are critical to drug development and to the design of toxicology and clinical pharmacology programs, and they should not be discounted. Yet for large CROs, these studies are often treated as nonessential since there’s more revenue to be made in a 28-day toxicology study than in a 2-day pharmacokinetic study.
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Meet the Team
Senior scientists lead every engagement. No middle layers—just deep expertise.
Christopher Crean
CEO, Founder
Angela Dixon
Senior Manager, Operations
Sarah Thrasher
Scientist, Pharmacometrics
Shiny Samuel
Scientist, Pharmacometrics
Polina Danshina
Senior Scientist, Analyst
Stevie Pope
Research Scientist
David Fischler
Research Scientist
Ashley Shultz
Research Scientist
Eden Harder
Research Scientist
Andrew Eicher
Associate Research Scientist
Andy Jones
Research Technician
Matthew Rich
Senior Scientist Pharmacometrics
Amelia Furbish
Senior Research Scientist
Scientific Fellows & Advisors
Andreas Krause, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow, Pharmacometrics & Model-Informed Drug Development
Andreas Krause, PhD, is a statistician and pharmacometrician with more than two decades of experience supporting model-informed drug development (MIDD). He has led quantitative pharmacology and clinical pharmacology modeling efforts across industry and consulting roles, including Novartis, Pharsight, Actelion/Idorsia, and Simulations Plus, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer Pharmacometrics.
His expertise includes population PK/PD modeling, dose selection, concentration-QT (C-QT) modeling, and clinical trial decision support, with particular strength in translating complex data into clear development strategy. Andreas has authored approximately 100 scientific publications and multiple books and holds editorial leadership roles with the Journal of Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics and Pharmaceutical Statistics.
A selection of case studies and publications from Dr. Krause is available at https://pmx.ch. At Xyzagen, he provides senior pharmacometric guidance, strategic review, and quantitative insight to support sponsor decision-making.
Peter Groenen Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow, Biomarkers & Ligand Binding Assay Development
Peter Groenen Ph.D., is the founder of Alpinuity Bio, a consulting company focused on biomarkers and translational science, and serves as Head of Translational Sciences at CerebrumDAO. He holds a PhD in molecular genetics and is focused on the molecular mechanisms of disease and treatment, with a strong commitment to advancing precision medicine in healthcare and drug development. He received his MSc in Biochemistry and Physiology from Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Peter previously led the Department of Translational Science at Actelion Pharmaceuticals and later Idorsia Pharmaceuticals for nearly 12 years. He currently serves on the advisory boards of Bioinitials AG and Quriegen, a multi-omics platform company focused on advancing R&D through single-cell analyses, and mentors entrepreneurs in the Basel region.
He has authored or co-authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications and led two national public–private partnership projects in the Netherlands focused on genomics and bioinformatics. He lectures at the University of Basel and ETH Zürich and serves on the scientific advisory board of the Karger journal Digital Biomarkers.
JoAnn Gorden
Research Fellow, Statistical Programming, Data Management, & CDISC
JoAnn Gorden brings more than 35 years of experience supporting pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and CRO organizations across clinical development programs. Her expertise centers on statistical programming, CDISC (Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium), and data management, with deep proficiency in SAS and R.
Throughout her career, JoAnn has worked with both large and emerging companies across a wide range of therapeutic programs including Respiratory and Ophthalmology. She is particularly experienced in translating complex study requirements into practical programming and data solutions that support timely regulatory submission and decision-making.
At Xyzagen, JoAnn provides senior-level statistical programming and data standards support, helping sponsors ensure data integrity, consistency, and readiness for analysis and regulatory review. Outside of work, JoAnn enjoys exploring the greenways and parks of central North Carolina on foot and by bike.
Business Operations
Accounts Payable/Receivable
Megan McKane
SME Business
Olly Thompson
SME Business
Human Resources
Ginger Milley
Performentor
Dana Schurz
Performentor
Quality Assurance
Mary Lynn
Windward Company
Jamaica Basco
QC specialist
IT
Ryan Keeter
Derrick Maudlin
Business Development
& Marketing
Imen Jellasi
Corstrate
Drew Harrison
Synaptigen
Heather Mills
Marketing Consultant
Contact Us
We would love to hear from you! Schedule a consultation with one of our senior scientists to learn more.
