Benson Edagwa is The Community Pride of Nebraska Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Louisiana State University in 2012. Benson has played a pivotal role in the development of several new inventions that have been licensed and are being developed to treat chronic illnesses. While at UNMC, Benson has been listed as an inventor on 84 US patent applications, over 60 peer reviewed publications and three book chapters. He also has formed significant collaborations with industry, having co-founded Exavir Therapeutics, a startup company created to develop ultra-long-acting therapies for viral infections and CNS disorders. The goal of Benson’s research is to transform frequently administered therapies into novel ultra-long-acting safe medicines that can be dosed once-every-six-months to once-a-year to facilitate prevention and treatment of persistent illnesses such as HIV infection, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, addiction to opiates and cardiometabolic diseases. His work has won numerous Awards and has continuously been supported through the National Institutes of Health, Nebraska community and global pharmaceutical companies. His collaborative work holds great promise to transform healthcare.
