It’s still relatively uncommon to see female leaders in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries.
In biotech, it’s estimated that only about 7-9% of chief executive roles are filled by women. It’s not an issue that’s unique to drugmakers: Among the Fortune 500, 6.4% were led by female CEOs.
But among the generation of leaders under 40, there are a number of women who are building companies, unlocking new ways to treat cancer, and harnessing revolutionary gene-editing tools.
Business Insider initially came up with a list of 30 leaders, through nominations and past coverage, who are shaping the future of medicine. Of that list, half were women. We asked them what the contribution the under-40 generation would have on medicine.
Here’s who’s doing groundbreaking work as young female leaders under 40 in biopharma, listed alphabetically.
Narges Bani Asadi, 36, wants to make human-genome analysis more useful to people.
Courtesy Narges Baniasadi
Narges Bani Asadi, the vice president and Life Cycle Leader of sequencing genomics at Roche Sequencing Informatics, grew up in Iran before moving to Stanford University for graduate school. While pursuing a master’s and later a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, she met a mentor who explained to her a future in which biology and medicine is more about data than a biology or chemistry lab problem. “It blew my mind,” she said.
From there, she started working at that intersection between computer science and medicine, launching a startup called Bina that was later acquired by Roche. The company worked to find clinical applications for genomic data, so that the findings that come out of academic researchers make it to patients.
“How can that actually change medicine? That’s the bottleneck today,” she said. “What is the clinical utility of this information?”
The contribution the under-40 generation will have on medicine: It will be getting more nontraditional, and possibly even younger people into the industry that come from different backgrounds and expertise areas, Bani Asadi said.
Stephanie Barrett, 36, is building implantable devices to help treat HIV and other infectious diseases.
Courtesy Merck
Stephanie Barrett, a principal scientist at Merck, is working to make implantable devices to treat infectious diseases. Originally from Canada, Barrett moved to the US in 2004 to get her Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Shortly after completing her graduate work, she joined Merck.
Right now, treatments for diseases such as HIV and hepatitis are taken via pills. Merck’s hope is that by building an implanted device, people will do better on the medications because they will actually adhere to them. Adherence is key when you’re thinking about infectious diseases like HIV where you need low viral counts.
The contribution the under-40 generation will have on medicine: The energy and “hungriness” this generation will have will propel things forward, Barrett said.
Viki Bockstal, 32, is developing vaccines to prevent HIV and Ebola.
Courtesy Janssen Vaccines
Viki Bockstal, the biomarker lead for filovirus vaccines at Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Vaccines, helps develop vaccines to prevent hard-to-treat conditions, including HIV, polio, and Ebola. She joined Janssen in 2012 after receiving her Ph.D. in bioengineering sciences at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Her job is to help Janssen’s Ebola vaccine keep moving through clinical trials, a process that can be difficult when there isn’t an Ebola outbreak. In the absence of that, Bockstal determines the parameters that help determine whether the vaccine is effective or not.
The contribution the under-40 generation will have on medicine: Bockstal said it will be by finding vaccines or cures for some of the infectious diseases and conditions that have so far evaded our grasp, such as Ebola, HIV and cancer. “I truly believe this generation has the best shot at not only making this happen, but also really eradicating diseases such as AIDS, measles, polio, tuberculosis, and malaria,” Bockstal said.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
