The BioProcess Insider Expression Platform

When it comes to hiring, there is not enough diversity at upper leadership levels says Bristol Myers Squibb’s Executive Director.

In the next episode of Voices of Biotech, brought to you by BioProcess Insider Expression Platform, Vibha Jawa, Executive Director of Bristol Myers Squibb discusses the limited diversity of the hiring pool, building a network of female professionals, and career mentorship.

Jawa shares her career journey and the challenges in transitioning from academia to industry. “There is always a mindset that people from academia are not made for biotech or the pharmaceutical sector. So, it took me a while to get out of that academic mode,” says Jawa.

This leads her to highlight the importance of mentoring and developing a strong network of support at the beginning of your career, “I could’ve benefited initially with a better network which I did not have.”

Jawa moves on to discuss diversity in leadership. Whilst this has improved on a graduate level, “if I'm looking for someone who can do a role where they manage a bigger group, I don't find the diversity. I don't even find it in the job pool,” says Jawa.

This episode of the Voices of Biotech - brought to you by the BioProcess Insider Expression Platform -brings you an in-depth conversation with Antoinette Gawin, CEO of Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies.

Gawin shares her personal experience of growing up within an immigrant farming community before entering the pharma space and climbing the career ladder. She talks about how people should not be afraid to show vulnerability in the workplace. Additionally, she discusses the importance of making sure all voices are heard, regardless of who the voices come from.

We discuss women in the life sciences space, diversity and inclusion, and how this cannot be seen as a task but must be part of your company culture to truly anchor value, employee wellbeing and successful performance. The conversation also delves into how there a perception that when a woman brings an idea to the space, there is still an aspect of risk associated with this.

“Women and people of diverse backgrounds remain underrepresented in the upper echelons of the biopharma c-suite,” says Ilona Gutcher, director of BD&L Oncology at Bayer.

Aligning with International Women’s Day (Wednesday 8th March) the BioProcess Insider Expression Platform has released its second episode of Voices of Biotech.

“I wouldn’t be here without the I&D Xcelerate program,” says Gutcher, another graduate of the Bayer program launched by Marianne De backer two years ago to promote diversity through a 6–9 month placement within Business Development & Licensing and Open Innovation (BD&L/OI) department.

She discusses her experience with the initiative and beyond, advocating for mentorship programs. and stressing the importance of having female role-models in C-suite positions to encourage women to reach their full potential.

Gutcher ends by saying Bayer has committed to achieve gender parity on each management level by 2030 and has plans to expand the I&D Xcelerate program to other divisions within the company.

With the celebration of International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11th February 2023, we are excited to announce Informa’s latest podcast series produced on the BioProcess Insider Expression Platform (BIEP), where we dive into the complex journey of key female leaders shaping the life science industry.

Despite the progress over the last decade, gender parity remains a global issue throughout all levels within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Within academia, only 33.3% of all researchers are women, dwindling to a further 12% making national science academies. It is important to question how the industry is evolving, what progress has been made, and what steps we need to take next. This podcast will celebrate women and minorities in science and what more can be done to amplify their voices.

In this first episode of Voices of Biotech, we are joined by Deepa Talpade, VP, BD&L and Strategic Alliances of Oncology at Bayer who discusses the success of Bayer’s I&D Xcelerate program, launched by Marianne De backer two years ago, which promotes diversity through a 6–9-month placement within Bayer’s BD&L department.

Deepa also touches upon the socioeconomic impact deterring women to reach their full potential, the necessity to take a risk on women and the need for authenticity in leadership roles: “we should be allowed to colour ourselves in the way that we choose to”.

This episode of the BioProcess Insider Expression Platform (BIEP) podcast brings you an in-depth conversation with Jason Foster, CEO of Ori Biotech. The company experienced a year of transition in 2022 with the closing of its $100 million Series B funding round and the expansion of its paperless cell and gene therapy (CGT) platform. 

Foster speaks about the current process of taking the platform from clinical to commercial through feedback derived from its LightSpeed Early Access Program (LEAP) partners. He also discusses the issues surrounding accessibility, pricing, and supply chain fragility in the advanced therapies space.  

The conversation moves on to talk about advanced therapies as both first and second-line treatments, in which Foster speaks about the hurdles created by the EU and US healthcare systems.

The latest edition of the BioProcess Insider Expression Platform has NIBRT’s Killian O'Driscoll speaking on Ireland’s robust biomanufacturing environment, training programs, and vendor-led technologies.

Ireland has long established itself as a drug manufacturing hub and is home to commercial production sites run by Big Pharma firms including Pfizer, J&J, Eli Lilly, and AstraZeneca, as well as numerous third-party manufacturing organizations and bioprocess vendor firms.

The business environment has been spurred by low corporate tax rates, but also a highly skilled workforce, which has been supported by the government-funded National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT). The Dublin institution has been described as a ‘flight simulator for biomanufacturing,’ and has trained over 4,000 people a year in bioproduction processes since it opened in 2011.

At Biotech Week Boston in September, BioProcess Insider caught up with Killian O'Driscoll, director of Projects at NIBRT, who spoke to us in depth about Ireland’s pharma heritage, NIBRT’s international presence, and its relationship with vendors.

Bikash Chatterjee and Stephanie Gaulding, CEO and MD at drug development consultancy firm Pharmatech Associates, talk about the different partnering and outsourcing strategies innovators can take, with a specific focus on smaller and mid-sized biotechs, which often don’t have the same level of in-built CMC expertise as Big Pharma. Whether you go with a single end-to-end CDMO or a multi-model approach, one thing is clear: know your product, know your needs and plan early.

This conversation originally took place as a Linkedin Live event ahead of the CPhI Worldwide conference happening in Frankfurt in November.

This episode of the BioProcess Insider Expression Platform (BIEP) podcast brings you an in-depth conversation with Stuart Curbishley, head of business and project development, advanced therapies at University of Birmingham and Ivan Wall, CEO, Four-Plus and director of the National Training Center for advanced therapies manufacturing.  

We delve deep into the challenges concerning training talent in the advanced therapy and wider biopharma space, potential solutions that could filter the staffing bottleneck, and how the respective institutions are responding to these issues.  

Another interview taken from the BioProcess International Theater at BIO, in June 2022.

This time, I sat down with Brian Finrow, the Co-Founder and CEO of Lumen Biosciences - a biotech looking to unlock the full potential of biologic drugs, whose promise has been held back by the lack of scalable technology.

The firm is developing ‘oral antibodies’ using its platform based on spirulina – the protein-rich cyanobacteria touted by many health enthusiasts as a ‘superfood’ – to create tiny factories that churn out therapeutic antibodies. 

Emmanuel Ligner, CEO of self-described bioprocess critical actor Cytiva, talks us through the changing biomanufacturing landscape and unveils his firm’s sustainability report during a fireside chat at the BioProcess International Theater at BIO in June