Sheila Mikhail
Co-founder, Asklepios BioPharmaceutical (AskBio)
Sheila Mikhail has over 20 years of biopharmaceutical leadership experience and is Chief Executive Officer of Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, Inc. (AskBio), a gene therapy company she co-founded in 2001. AskBio operated as an intellectual property holding company until April 2017, before which AskBio spun out several companies with Mikhail serving as CEO of Bamboo Therapeutics. Bamboo was acquired by Pfizer in August 2016 in a deal valued at $827 million. She stepped down as CEO of AskBio in March 2023 to focus on her own health, but after encountering inequities in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, Mikhail has been using her position and her voice to educate and empower women to demand more from their own healthcare rights. As a founder of the Columbus Children Foundation, she has helped children with free access to treatment for AADC (juvenile Parkinson’s). A self-described serial entrepreneur and philanthropist, Mikhail has a worthy repeat entrance into this year's Power List.
Read our 2023 interview with Sheila Mikhail
Who has inspired you over the years?
I have a 25-year working relationship with Jude Samulski. Together, we have created multiple companies and Columbus Children’s Foundation to develop innovative gene therapy drugs. As the first to clone AAV for therapeutic purposes, he was the “father” of the AAV field. He inspires me by continuing to be a visionary and by relentlessly pursuing solutions for shortcomings in the technology. With over 300 patents, he remains a prolific inventor who continuously puts patients at the forefront of everything he does.
What goals would you still like to personally achieve?
I would like to establish a specialized hospital that delivers gene therapies for the treatment of children with ultra rare genetic diseases. It would be modeled after St. Jude’s Hospital, where patients would be treated free of charge.
