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Chief Operations Officer, President, and Founder, Vincerx Pharma

In addition to Vincerx, Raquel Izumi is the co-founder of Acerta Pharma and Aspire Therapeutics LLC, before which she served as senior director of clinical development at Pharmacyclics LLC. At the latter, she helped design and implement seven clinical studies across various hematologic malignancies, including for medicines such as Calquence (acalabrutinib) and Imbruvica (ibrutinib), garnering breakthrough designations, accelerated approvals, and subsequent blockbuster exits. These medicines now treat cancer patients worldwide. 

Izumi’s influence and successes did not come easily. Nor are they limited to the pharmaceutical world; her story has been portrayed in Nathan Vardi’s For Blood and Money: Billionaires, Biotech and the Quest for a Blockbuster Drug. 

Elsewhere, Izumi acts in the capacity of mentor to many aspiring young scientists, women, and ethnic minorities; she strongly advocates for diversity and inclusion by assembling a team at Vincerx with women comprising 44 percent of the workforce worldwide and 39 percent of employees born outside of the US. 

“We have started this company (Vincerx) based on a novel modular bioconjugation platform that allows us to tailor the development of ADCs or SMDCs to address the biology of the specific cancer being targeted.”