Avenio AI Names Dr. Cyrus Ghobadi Board Advisor as Artiko Pharma Adopts Avenio AI for Clinical Protocol Development

AbbVie, Lilly, and AstraZeneca veteran joins Avenio's Board of Advisors; Artiko Pharma adopts Avenio AI Intelligent Protocol Hub to compress IND timelines.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, May 21, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Avenio AI, the AI-native application pioneering agentic intelligence for authoring high-quality protocols for clinical research and operations, today announced the appointment of Dr. Cyrus Ghobadi, MD PhD as Board Advisor. In parallel, Dr. Ghobadi's newly founded firm, Artiko Pharma Consulting (Artiko), has selected Avenio AI Intelligent Protocol Hub as its clinical AI application of choice to support biotech sponsors across early-phase clinical development from IND-enabling work through First-Patient-In (FPI) and into Phase 2/3 readouts.

“Cyrus is the rare physician scientist who has sat in both the sponsor and investigator seats, compressed First-Patient-In (FPI) timelines on real programs, and de-risked more than 20 IND-through-Phase 3 efforts. His decision to deploy Avenio AI Intelligent Protocol Hub at Artiko Pharma is exactly the validation we set out to earn from drug development leaders.”
— Ajay Jotwani, Co-founder & CEO, Avenio AI

Dr. Ghobadi joins Avenio's Advisory Board following his most recent role as Executive Medical Director and Head of the Clinical Pharmacology Research Unit at AbbVie. Over the past two decades, he has led early-phase clinical development at leading global Pharma entities AbbVie, Eli Lilly, and AstraZeneca. Dr. Ghobadi's effort have shaped clinical strategy, protocol design, and translational approaches across immunology, oncology, respiratory, and endocrinology therapeutic areas.

A physician scientist, Dr. Ghobadi brings an unusual dual perspective to Avenio. From the sponsor side, he has led programs from IND submission through Phase 3 readouts. From the site side, he has served as Principal Investigator and Head of a Phase 1 unit with direct accountability for feasibility, recruitment, and on-the-ground execution. He is also a Senior Appraiser with the UK's General Medical Council, where he has supported the development of more than 1,800 GMC-registered physicians worldwide.

Earlier this year, Dr. Ghobadi founded Artiko Pharma Consulting to serve small and mid-sized biotechs as a fractional CMO and hands-on clinical lead bringing Fortune 500 clinical rigor at the speed and cost structure of a lean organization. Artiko will use Avenio AI Intelligent Protocol Hub to accelerate protocol authoring, IND and Investigator's Brochure preparation, safety signal detection, medical monitoring, and PBPK-informed dose selection across its client engagements.

“The decisions made between IND submission and first-patient-in determine whether a Phase 2 readout is compelling or inconclusive and by then, it is expensive to fix. Avenio AI is the first AI application I have seen that meets clinical development teams where the work actually happens: in the protocol, the IB, the safety review, the dose decision. At Artiko Pharma, Avenio AI lets me execute faster, with more rigor, and with audit-ready documentation, for every biotech I partner with. Joining the Advisory Board is a natural extension of that conviction.”
— Dr. Cyrus Ghobadi, MD PhD, Founder & Principal Consultant, Artiko Pharma Consulting; Board Advisor, Avenio AI

Dr. Ghobadi's appointment comes as Avenio scales the Intelligent Protocol Hub across a customer base that now includes several leading BioPharma enterprises, CROs, and academic research institutions, following the platform's selection for the NVIDIA Inception Program. The pairing of seasoned clinical development judgment with agentic AI is designed to address one of the most expensive bottlenecks in clinical development: protocol authoring and amendments, which industry research estimates cost sponsors an average of $300K per protocol and remain a leading contributor to missed deadlines, protocol deviations, and program delays. The bottleneck is operational workflows now streamlined to enable deep research, clear & concise authoring, flagging risks and inconsistencies, and enhancing stakeholder collaboration for ease of reviews and approvals.

"When a clinician of Cyrus’s caliber chooses Avenio not only to advise us, but also to use the Avenio AI application in his own client engagements, it sends a powerful signal to biotech CMOs and clinical development leaders. Avenio AI Intelligent Protocol Hub is built to help teams move faster from IND to First-Patient-In while improving protocol quality, risk visibility, and audit-ready documentation."
— Ajay Jotwani, Co-founder & CEO of Avenio AI

Avenio is actively onboarding new BioPharma enterprises, CROs, and biotech sponsors, with priority placement for programs approaching IND or entering Phase 1/2. Drug development leaders, investors, and clinical operations executives interested in evaluating Avenio AI Intelligent Protocol Hub can request access at www.avenio.ai or contact Press@Avenio.AI.

About Avenio AI (https://www.avenio.ai/)
Avenio AI is the Intelligent Protocol Hub for BioPharma, a purpose-built application that brings regulatory intelligence, scientific rigor, and protocol-aware AI into clinical development workflows. The platform helps teams streamline protocol authoring, amendments, site operations, and pre-regulatory execution by surfacing risks earlier, improving collaboration, and generating audit-ready documentation across the clinical lifecycle.
Avenio participates in the NVIDIA Inception Program and runs on Google Cloud to support enterprise-grade scale and security. The platform is designed to support auditability and workflows aligned with regulated clinical development environments, including 21 CFR Part 11 considerations.

About Artiko Pharma Consulting (www.artikopharma.com)
Artiko Pharma Consulting (Artiko) is a biopharma-exclusive clinical development consultancy founded by Dr. Cyrus Ghobadi in February 2026. Artiko partners with small and mid-sized biotechs as a fractional CMO and hands-on clinical lead, delivering end-to-end clinical leadership: protocols, INDs, Investigator's Brochures, and CSRs from first draft to submission-ready, with First-in-Human strategies that compress timelines and protect budget. Learn more at www.artikopharma.com

Subhasis Patnaik
Avenio Corp
Press@Avenio.AI
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