Words of Wisdom
To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of The Medicine Maker, we look back on some of our most popular “Sitting Down With” interviews. These VIP interviews explore careers, motivations, and the love of the industry and drug development.
Carl June, Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine; Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, at the University of Pennsylvania – and 2018 TIME 100 honoree!
“No one could have predicted what has happened in CAR T – for many reasons! For one thing, it actually worked a lot better in our initial trials in humans than it had worked in mice.”
Peter Marks, Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at the FDA, USA
“You need to know when to zoom in to get into the weeds of the data and when to zoom out and let others deal with the data while you make the high-level decisions. That, to me, is an important balance to have.”
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon, India
“I thought, why not start my own business and show them what a woman can do? It was rebellion and the desire to prove myself that made me take up the challenge.”
Fiona Killard-Lynch, Director of Research and Innovation at NIBRT
“There is also a lack of clarity around research careers. Some researchers remain on precarious contracts – it’s not a stable landscape for them, so there’s a risk of a brain drain from academia into industry.”
Anne Marie de Jonge-Schuermans, Board Member of the Swiss Biotech Association and Global Head of Biologics & Injectables Operations at Sandoz
“It’s very difficult to plan a career. There are many things that you can do to influence things, but there are also special moments that are not entirely in your hands, where you depend on the trust of others and your network.”
Thomas Otto, Managing Director of Vetter Pharma-Fertigung, Ravensburg, Germany
“At the start of my career, I just wanted a satisfying job! But as I moved deeper into the pharmaceutical business, I realized that I was working in an industry that saves lives. That reality left a really deep impression on me and that’s why I’ve stayed in the industry.”
Matthew Ellis, Former Senior Vice President, Early Oncology, Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca
“After a lifetime in academia – and now, as a cancer survivor myself – I became impatient with the slow progress the cancer research community is making for patients. University research is great at developing therapeutic hypotheses, but not so good at delivering on these insights.”
Kelly Chibale, Neville Isdell Chair in African-centric Drug Discovery & Development, and Director, H3D, University of Cape Town, South Africa
“Chemistry is one of those things that people either love or hate. For me, it was more than a subject studied at school or even a profession – it was a calling.”
Jane Osbourn, Chief Scientific Officer of Alchemab and former chair of the UK BioIndustry Association
“I have been lucky enough to work with scores of very talented colleagues over the years, and my achievements always feel like a celebration of that teamwork.”
Luigi Naldini, Director, San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, Milan, Italy
“Paradoxically, an HIV-derived vector was safer than the earlier gamma retroviral vectors! We really did work hard to disable the original virus and improve the safety – but the results went beyond expectation.”
Making great scientific magazines isn’t just about delivering knowledge and high quality content; it’s also about packaging these in the right words to ensure that someone is truly inspired by a topic. My passion is ensuring that our authors’ expertise is presented as a seamless and enjoyable reading experience, whether in print, in digital or on social media. I’ve spent fourteen years writing and editing features for scientific and manufacturing publications, and in making this content engaging and accessible without sacrificing its scientific integrity. There is nothing better than a magazine with great content that feels great to read.
