He was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Vrana began teaching at West Virginia University in 1986 as an assistant professor.
He left for the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in 1991, and became a full professor in 2001.
[1] Vrana was named chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the Milton S. Hersey Medical Center at Penn State in 2004 after Elliot Vesell stepped down.
[2] He concurrently holds the Elliot S. Vesell professorship at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, and serves as the founding Director of the Pennsylvania-designated Medical Marijuana Academic Clinical Research Center (ACRC) at Penn State.