Dr. Zain Paroo is a member of the XPRIZE Global Visioneering Brain Trust, shaping design of the next generation of moonshot competitions in Health.

At the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Dr. Paroo directed a portfolio of biotechnology programs and multi-disciplinary teams across industry, academia and public research institutions.  He designed programs to develop:  a) universal cancer vaccines, and b) predictive imaging capabilities to forecast anatomical location of future sites of disease.

Dr. Paroo published the first siRNA pharmacology studies which highlighted critical challenges for clinical development.  He then demonstrated small molecule approaches to target RNA.  Through biochemical and computational approaches, he identified 120 human RNA metabolizing enzymes as new drug target space.  He developed commercial drug discovery pipelines and lead programs in antivirals, oncology, immuno-oncology and genetic disorders.

Dr. Paroo is a proud product of the UT Southwestern Medical Center “School of Protein Discovery,” shaped by Nobel prize winning breakthroughs in cholesterol metabolism, G-proteins, innate immunity and neural synapses.  He has published in leading journals including Cell, Science and Nature Biotechnology.  Dr. Paroo was named an Investigator of the Chicago Biomedical Consortium and Research Scholar of the American Cancer Society.  He provides strategic scientific counsel to companies developing novel classes of molecular therapeutics.