Solaris Vaccines, a biotechnology company pioneering a novel approach to vaccine development, announced the addition of an accomplished scientist to its leadership team. Jonathan O. Rayner, PhD, joins as Chief Scientific Officer. This strategic appointment bolsters Solaris’s mission to address some of the most persistent challenges in infectious disease prevention.
"I couldn’t be more excited to be joining the exceptional team at Solaris Vaccines to further develop and apply the SolaVAX platform for next generation whole inactivated vaccines against pathogens of global health importance," says Rayner.
Joining Solaris as Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Rayner brings over 25 years of experience in the discovery and development of drugs and vaccines against a myriad of infectious diseases and cancer. Currently Associate Professor and Director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the University of South Alabama, Dr. Rayner has also led research at AlphaVax Inc, MRIGlobal, and Southern Research Institute. As such, Dr. Rayner has been extensively trained in the conduct of preclinical safety and efficacy studies according to GLP regulations. He is also experienced with GMP and GLP regulations required to bring a new drug or vaccine to market.
Dr. Rayner received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from Colorado State University in 1998 and completed two post-doctoral research programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases where he first started working on vaccines development. Based on that experience, Dr. Rayner joined AlphaVax Inc. as a Research Scientist where he was specifically responsible for optimizing and applying a proprietary recombinant viral vaccine platform. In 2005, Dr. Rayner was recruited to MRIGlobal to serve as Principal Investigator on contracts aimed at assessing the bioweapons threat posed by pathogens of high consequence as well as to develop methods to detect, decontaminate, and protect against those pathogens. In 2012, Dr. Rayner was again recruited, this time to Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, AL, to serve as the Director of Infectious Disease Research in the Drug Development Division. Here Dr. Rayner led a team of more than 70 scientists and served as Principal Investigator, Program Manager, and Study Director on multiple contracts with government, industry, and academic partners to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of new candidate drugs and vaccines against multiple infectious diseases such as anthrax, Zika, chikungunya, and influenza. Since joining the University of South Alabama in 2017, Dr. Rayner has continued to support the development of new products and technologies against infectious disease threats with an emphasis on small biotech companies needing proof-of-concept data to pursue non-dilutive funding.
About Solaris Vaccines, Inc.
Created in 2021 by VIC Technology Venture Development, Solaris Vaccines is applying its photoinactivation platform using non-toxic UV light and Vitamin B2 to rapidly produce effective vaccines against many of the world’s deadliest pathogens, including pandemic influenza, dengue, tuberculosis, and others. Go to solarisvax.com to learn more.