Women in Pharma and Biotech

In episode 4 of Ai Meets Life Sci, Kayleen Brown, managing editor at DeviceTalks and Brian Buntz, pharma and biotech editor, chat with Helen Merianos, Ph.D., head of R+D portfolio strategy at Sanofi and Michelle Longmire, MD, CEO of Medable. The focus? The two-fold application of AI in their respective companies’ technologies, both for scientific advancement…

Could the genetic secrets of “extreme mammals” help unlock treatments for myriad human diseases? The Emeryville, California–based startup Fauna Bio is betting on that premise.  One of the animals the firm is studying include the 13-lined ground squirrel, which can double its body weight in fat accumulation in summer before entering hibernation in an obese…

Amgen has developed a machine learning platform to slash clinical trial times through smarter site selection. Known as ATOMIC, short for Analytical Trial Optimization Module, the system crunches disparate datasets to predict optimal trial locations, expedite enrollment and trial processes. Early results indicate more than a two times increase in enrollment speed at ATOMIC sites.…

Founded in 2011, Caribou Biosciences is a pioneer in the development of CRISPR genome editing technologies, a field honored with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020. Co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., one of the Nobel laureates, and CEO Rachel Haurwitz, and two other CRISPR pioneers, the company has raised over $800 million in funding,…

Deepcell co-founder Maddison Masaeli took an unexpected path from academic research to launching an AI-powered cell analysis platform. The company has raised close to $100 million in funding to support its mission. This includes a $73 million Series B round and an earlier $20 million Series A round. The company has entered into a research…

Decentralized clinical trial pioneer Medable unveiled an intelligent automation technology at the JP Morgan Health Care Conference, claiming it can slash standard trial build timelines by at least 50%. This development hinges around electronic clinical outcomes assessment (eCOA) — a common bottleneck in trial startups. “We’ve used AI to essentially take a protocol and translate…

When Cindy Oksanen started out at Pfizer’s Groton, Connecticut research headquarters in 1992, she entered an environment where female Ph.D.s in leadership positions were rare. Starting out as a lab scientist, she developed formulations for new drugs including oral dosage forms like tablets and capsules. “We would develop the dosage forms and then transfer the…

With nearly 20 years of experience at Johnson & Johnson, Cynthia Accuosti Jones now spearheads the company’s pioneering maternal-fetal medicine group tackling unmet needs in high-risk pregnancies. As vice president of global commercial strategy for autoantibody and maternal fetal health, she spotlights listening as the driver for patient impact. “You can’t have empathy if you…

Now the vice president and head of medical affairs at CymaBay Therapeutics, Mary Standen‘s passion for healthcare was sparked in her high school years when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though her mother eventually recovered, Standen was galvanized to help provide both emotional support and practical assistance, such as administering weekly injections. The…

Dr. Katie Abouzahr’s career, which began in the wards of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) before extending into management consulting, paved the way for her leadership of autoantibody and maternal fetal medicine programs at Johnson & Johnson. “It’s not a typical pharma executive’s straight line path,” she acknowledged. “Careers can often be jungle gyms…

In episode 2 of AI Meets Life Sci, DeviceTalks Managing Editor Kayleen Brown, and Pharma Editor Brian Buntz explore how Big Tech is developing artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in a variety of healthcare organizations. Elena Bonfiglioli, global business leader for Health and Life Sciences at Microsoft, weighs in on the subject, also sharing that she…

Kathy Fernando, the senior vice president, head of Pfizer Ignite and Pfizer CentreOne, has had a professional trajectory marked by pivotal serendipities. One occurred when attending a seminar at the University of Pennsylvania, where she met Dr. Drew Weissman, a prominent immunologist and RNA vaccine researcher. Weissman, along with Katalin Karikó, recently received the Nobel…

Professionals in the biotherapy world are engaged in a sort of balancing act, juggling the nuances of product development, complex science, leadership dynamics, and patient-centricity. In a recent interview, Abby Waters, Ph.D., senior manager of solution owners at Be The Match BioTherapies, opens up about her decade-long journey navigating these multifaceted challenges. From embracing agile…

When Keri Yale, the company’s head of patient affairs and engagement at Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), joined more than 25 years ago, she recognized a need to put patients at the center of the pharmaceutical industry. Since then, she has spearheaded a transformation towards greater patient centricity at the company that started with HIV/AIDS community engagement…

Her previous roles include a stint as the head of development for oncology cell therapies at Takeda. She also led the North American Innovation Center and R&D Digital Accelerator at Sanofi and held a leadership role in Lilly’s oncology business unit. Bit.bio’s differentiated approach Corzo’s decision to join bit.bio was rooted in the company’s pioneering…

Cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing is rapidly transitioning from scientific curiosity to clinical reality. But the manufacturing complexity of CGTs far outpaces traditional biologics production, presenting a multifaceted challenge that is part scientific, part technological. “The manufacturing process for cell therapies and gene therapies is infinitely more complex than it is for let’s say,…

In an era of rapid AI progress, the quest to pioneer the first AI-developed drug candidates has led to an increasing number of these drug candidates entering clinical trials. One contender is ulotaront, an antipsychotic drug, that fared well in a phase 3 schizophrenia study published in NEJM in 2020. Sunovion discovered the drug in…

In collaboration with Colgate-Palmolive, organ-on-a-chip developer Draper has unveiled a gum tissue model that can sustain gum tissue viability for up to 28 days. The timeline far exceeded that of previous models. The research was featured in Communications Biology, an imprint of Nature. Else Vedula, a senior researcher at Draper, described the gum tissue model…

From her early days as a research assistant at UCLA, to her work as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, Deepcell co-founder and CEO Maddison Mahdokht Masaeli has actively engaged in the field of biomedical engineering. Now, Masaeli and her team at Deepcell, a company she co-founded in 2017, are introducing a new strategy to drug…

The gene therapy platform company Capsida Biotherapeutics (Thousand Oaks, California) is gearing up to unveil initial data on its engineered adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids at the upcoming American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) 26th Annual Meeting, held May 16–20 in Los Angeles. In developing these capsids, Capsida Chief Scientific Officer Susan Catalano explained…

As drug discovery evolves, digital pathology platforms are playing a vital role in streamlining preclinical R&D processes and accelerating drug discovery. Proscia‘s Concentriq for Research reflects this trend. Earlier this year, we profiled PathAI’s AISight, a digital pathology platform designed to support AI-driven research. To learn more about Proscia’s digital pathology technology, we caught up with…

Suzette DiMascio is a prominent figure in the specialty pharmacy industry with nearly three decades of experience and a relentless commitment to improving patient access to care. Currently serving as Executive Vice President at the biopharmaceutical and plasma product supplier FFF Enterprises (Temecula, California), she also sits on several boards, including ICON International, Zensights, and…

LeAnn Kuhlmann-Qi is the chief commercial officer of Columbia, Missouri–based Endevica Bio. The company’s lead drug candidate is TCMCB07, a peptide melanocortin-4 antagonist for cachexia stemming from cancer and other chronic conditions. Holding an MBA. from the University of Missouri, Kuhlmann-Qi has extensive experience managing the business aspects of early-stage biotechnology companies. She is also…

At ASH 2022, Roche (SWX: ROG) subsidiary Genentech presented new data demonstrating the potential of glofitamab and mosunetuzumab, its investigational CD20xCD3 T-cell engaging bispecific antibodies, as fixed-duration, off-the-shelf treatment options for two types of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) – large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) and follicular lymphoma (FL), respectively. “The new data demonstrated durable and impressive patient…

Last year, the Biden administration drafted an executive order that promoted competition in the U.S. economy across several industries, including pharma and biotech. The focus on the pharma industry was not surprising, given Biden’s campaign pledge to curb drug pricing. To that end, the Biden administration has explored a variety of approaches, according to Robin Adelstein, the…