Rutgers RWJMS · ·School of Public Health
How a medicine feels is evidence.
Abanoub J. Armanious, M.S.
Pharmacoepidemiologist · Neuropsychiatry Researcher · Founder
In my field, what a drug does in a trial counts as data, and what it does to a person counts as anecdote. My work refuses that split. I hold what people live through to the standard we give the biology, until the experience itself carries the weight of evidence.
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Behind each line is a real person, and reading them this closely is how their experience turns into knowledge.
marks a low rating
- No Improvement in Sleep
- Paralysis
- Nightmares
- Discontinued or Plan to Discontinue
marks a high rating
- General Gain in Sleep Quality
- Minimal or No Side Effects
- No Next Day Somnolence
- Quick Onset of Sleep
Apart, each is a story. Together, read the same way, they become a finding.
Lemborexant reviews, by the rating their authors left. Low ratings tracked sleep that did not improve and nights of paralysis and nightmares.
One method, pointed at one question after another.
Sleep Med. · 2026 · view ↗
Sleep paralysis most set apart the people who quit or considered quitting.
JMIR · 2026 · view ↗
Satisfaction tracked results, not the side effects along the way.
Psychiatry Res. Comm. · 2024 · view ↗
A morning drug for a problem that typically comes at night, paid for in lost sleep.
↳ Scaling the work
Then I built the instrument the method needed.
Reading every review by hand does not scale, and pasting a transcript into a chatbot is not science. So I spent two years building pakhom, an R package that runs this same reading at a scale no coder could, and holds it to the standard a reviewer would. It keeps what makes hand-coding trustworthy and a chatbot throws away.
Coptic · "eagle"
pakhom is the Coptic name of Saint Pachomius the Great, the Egyptian who wrote the first rule that made a shared practice reproducible in the fourth century. I am Coptic, and the package writes the rules that make this kind of analysis reproducible.
Full publication record on Google Scholar and ORCID.
Translation runs the other way, too.
Upstream, I turn what patients live through into evidence, and that evidence keeps surfacing the same unmet needs. At the bench it runs the other way, from a molecule toward a medicine. I take the gaps those studies expose to the compounds built to close them, characterizing how a candidate behaves in the brain and in behavior, then helping build the case that it could reach patients. Two compounds trace that arc.
The first compound ran through my undergraduate years. JA212 is the James Lab's small-molecule candidate for binge eating disorder. I characterized it, then set out to prove it could reach patients.
- The thesis
My award-winning honors thesis followed JA212 through a rodent model of binge eating, where it reduced the behavior without the off-target effects that limit the drugs in use today.
George H. Cook honors thesis · 2023
- The venture
EXEDO, the venture built around the compound, won the High-Performance Grand Prize and the Genentech-sponsored DEI Award at a final pitch showcase in Philadelphia.
Nucleate Activator · 2023 ↗ - The case
As an Entrepreneurial Lead, I ran over a hundred interviews with clinicians, patients, and payers to map where a drug like this fits and where current options fail. The bench work continues today.
NSF I-Corps · 2022-2023
The second I met at the bench. PW507 is a triazole-based sigma-1 receptor antagonist, and I led the preclinical behavioral studies investigating its effects on reward and appetite. It has now been licensed for the clinic.
- The record
I co-authored the peer-reviewed review of the sigma-1 receptor as a target across runaway reward, from drugs to food. It is the groundwork PW507 was built on.
Addiction Neuroscience · 2023 ↗ - The behavior
As first author, I characterized PW507 in rodent models of binge-like eating, where it reduced the behavior and the motivation to seek out palatable food.
Work presented at ACNP, IBNS, SfN, and NSF LSAMP
- The validation
In December 2025, Rutgers licensed PW507 to Tonix Pharmaceuticals, now advancing toward the clinic as TNX-4900. Vanishingly few compounds ever make that leap.
Rutgers · December 2025 ↗
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I have not only studied what people go through. I was the first responder when it became a crisis.
In a university residential community, I supervised resident assistants and carried the on-call phone, trained and trauma-informed to respond to suicidal crises, psychosis, and overdose. The department named me its Graduate Intern of the Year in 2025.
On the worst nights, the students in my care were never alone. Someone ready was always in the room.
The same steadiness reaches past that room.
A nonprofit I run, for children three continents away that no dataset counts.
92¢ of every dollar reaches the programs
Every name here links to the work itself.
"Public health is, at its core,
an act of translation"
I am a first-generation college graduate. My work keeps returning to the gap between how a treatment reads in the data and how it feels to live through, and to the people that gap overlooks. I notice it because I grew up inside one.
- 2026 - M.S. EpidemiologyGPA 3.98 · ΔΩ InducteeGPA 3.98 · Delta Omega Inductee
Rutgers School of Public Health
Pharmacoepidemiology Concentration; thesis titled, 'Factors associated with ADHD medication switching intent: A cross-sectional mixed-methods analysis with Shapley value decomposition.' Advised by Greta A. Bushnell, PhD, MSPH.
- 2023 - B.S. Public Healthcum laudecum laude
Rutgers University - New Brunswick
Double major in Cell Biology & Neuroscience, minor in Religion; honors thesis titled 'JA212: A novel preclinical-stage pharmaceutical for binge eating disorder.' Advised by Morgan H. James, PhD.
Most research at my stage never leaves the journal. Mine did, twice.
Both of my studies on Ozempic and Vyvanse, the only drug FDA-approved for binge eating disorder, reached the national press.
Written to be read, not cited.
Rutgers School of Public Health
21st Century Scholar Distinction
2025Rutgers SPH, first M.S. recipient
IBNS Travel Award
2025International Behavioral Neuroscience Society
Trainee Professional Development Award
2023Society for Neuroscience
Roy DeBoer Outstanding Senior Award
2023Cook Community Alumni Association
Outstanding Senior Thesis Award
2023George H. Cook Scholars Program
Excellence in Research Award
2023Garden State-LSAMP
How a medicine feels to the person taking it is evidence, not anecdote. Everything I do follows from that.
If this is the kind of work you care about,
I'd like to hear from you.
Abanoub J. Armanious
© 2026
NYC Metropolitan Area
New York Metropolitan Area