Dr. Kerkar has served as Vice President, R&D at EXUMA Biotech since 2020.  Prior to EXUMA, he was Associate Vice President at Eli Lilly & Company, providing medical leadership to large cross-functional and early clinical development teams.  Prior to Lilly, he held roles at Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals and Bristol-Myers Squibb.  From 2006-2015, Dr. Kerkar was at the National Institutes of Health, where he completed postdoctoral research and clinical fellowships at the Surgery Branch of the National Cancer Institute.  His research on the genetic modification of T cells with cytokines to reverse the immuno-suppressive tumor microenvironment advanced from bench to bedside using adoptive T cell therapy.  While at the NCI, Dr. Kerkar provided clinical care to patients on Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg’s cancer immunotherapy protocols.

Dr. Kerkar earned his B.A. in economics and biology from Kalamazoo College, his M.D. from Wayne State University School of Medicine, and completed a general surgery internship at Detroit Medical Center, an anatomic pathology residency at NIH, and a surgical pathology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic.