Extra Time

On International Women's Day, Adam talks with Dr Annalisa Jenkins, one of the industry’s most accomplished leaders.

Annalisa’s inspirational career spans over 25 years in the global biopharma industry – she started her career at St Barts, in London, where she trained as a cardiologist, before joining the British Royal Navy as a medical officer during the Gulf Conflict, achieving the rank of surgeon lieutenant commander during her time there.

Annalisa spent almost two decades producing a pipeline of innovation at Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck Serono – she has built and led scientific, regulatory and medical affairs teams to advance programs from scientific research through clinical development, regulatory approval, and into healthcare systems globally.

More recently, Annalisa, has focussed her experience on building and financing biotech companies, pursuing cures for the most challenging rare diseases and working to address important medical issues globally. She served as President and CEO of Dimension Therapeutics, a leading gene therapy company that she took public on the NASDAQ and subsequently sold to Ultragenyx in 2017.

Annalisa is a committee member of the Science Board to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, board member at Faster Cures, a centre of The Milken Institute and Chair of The Court at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She also sits on the board of many growing companies and is a fierce champion for diversity and inclusion, particularly for women in science.

Adam talks to Dr James Jett, a leader in the field of pulmonology whose career spans more than four decades. Jim was Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic for almost 30 years before joining the National Jewish in Denver, Colorado. Jim was Editor in Chief of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology for almost 10 years and additionally has served in journal review and editorial activities for numerous medical publications, including the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Cancer, Chest and The New England Journal of Medicine. Jim now works with Biodesix, in Colorado as their Chief Medical Officer where he continues to support work in lung cancer.

Jim talks about the advances that he has seen in lung cancer over his career and what he is most optimistic about in lung cancer diagnosis and treatment. He also talks about what impact COVID-19 has had on the healthcare system in the US, what long term impact it might on the early detection of cancer and what silver linings he has observed in the pandemic cloud.

Adam talks to Dr Parag Mallick from Stanford University where he is a Professor. Having originally trained as an engineer biochemist, Parag's research is diverse and spans computational and experimental systems biology, cancer biology, and nanotechnology.

Parag talks about the diverse applications of proteomics and the value of bringing together different perspectives and disciplines to tackle challenging problems like biomarker analysis and personalised medicine. He also talks about the importance of and future opportunity for bioinformatics and shares his thoughts on the broader recognition of early detection that started to gain momentum in immuno-oncology but has now expanded to other treatment modalities.

Adam talks to Ola Winqvist, Professor of Cellular Immunotherapy at the Karolinska Institute and Chief Physician of Clinical Immunology at the Karolinska University Hospital.

Ola gives Adam a primer on the immune system, how it responds to disease and infection, and particularly, the role of autoantibodies as biomarkers or targets for some therapies. Ola also talks about the changes he has seen in in the field of immunology over the last thirty years and he shares his thoughts on how Sweden has managed the pandemic.

Adam talks to Professor Chris Molloy, CEO of the UK's Medicines Discovery Catapult, the National Research Technology Facility supporting the sector by industrialising and driving the adoption of new approaches to discovering medicines. 

Most recently, Chris has been responsible for establishing and running the Lighthouse Labs, the biggest diagnostic lab in British history. Developed in partnership with AstraZeneca and GSK, these labs provide diagnostics infrastructure, which have the capability to test tens of thousands of patient samples each day for Coronavirus.

Chris talks about the herculean task he and his team had in setting up the LightHouse Labs, what he is most proud of and with the lab infrastructure now in place, what are the opportunities to test, trace, and better stratify patients into various forms of therapies in the United Kingdom.

Adam talks to Dr Richard Roope, a General Practitioner with a special interest in cancer management and Senior Clinical Advisor (for Prevention and Early Diagnosis) at Cancer Research UK. As we find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic, which has put extreme pressure on cancer services globally, Richard discusses our biggest challenge when it comes to cancer management. He also talks about why it is we have seen less referrals for all cancers and lung cancer in particular, and how we can reach out to the missing patients.

Adam talks to Dr Melanie Lee, Chief Executive of British life science medical research charity, LifeArc.

Melanie talks about her journey and how she made the leap from academia to industry, the people that inspired her along her journey and what change she has seen over the years in attitudes towards the early detection of disease. Melanie shares her views on what the diagnostics industry could be doing to support the NHS in managing the backlog of disease as a result of the pandemic. She also talks about what projects she is most excited about at LifeArc, and what we can expect to see more of over the next 12 months.

Adam talks to Professor Gino Martini, Chief Scientific Officer for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the body that supports pharmacists across the UK as well as championing pharmacy across media and government and leading the way in medicines information.

Professor Martini talks about his career, the effect the pandemic will have on the speed of drug development and what the future of community pharmacy will look like. He also talks about how the pharmaceutical industry is embracing precision medicine and evolving with the introduction of various diagnostic tools that give us the opportunity to detect earlier and stratify patients better.

Adam talks to Dr Ian Campbell, Executive Chair at Innovate UK, the UK Government’s innovation agency that funds business and research collaborations to accelerate innovation and drive business investment into R&D. 

Ian talks about how the COVID pandemic has impacted innovation in the UK, the challenges and opportunities for diagnostics coming out of the pandemic as well as what the diagnostics industry can do to help the NHS deal with the backlog of cancers. Ian also talks about his move to LifeArc later in the year and what his aspirations are for the organisation.

Adam talks to Professor Frank Sullivan, Professor of Primary Care Medicine at the University of St. Andrews and Chief Investigator for the Early detection of Cancer of the Lung Scotland (ECLS) trial. Frank talks about the challenges of managing cancer in some of the most deprived communities in the country, why lung cancer specifically, is so difficult to diagnose and why the results of the ECLS trial are so significant.

Adam and Frank also discuss the role that the EarlyCDT Lung blood test could play in helping to overcome the excess burden of undiagnosed cancers we're seeing as a result of the COVID crisis.