Ex­pand­ing the End­points news­room over­seas, a spe­cial projects hire and our new lead for events

It’s been an amaz­ing first half of the year here at End­points News. Our com­pa­ny is 50% big­ger than it was at the start of 2023, with growth in our news team, our busi­ness side and our sup­port group — all built around our mis­sion of be­ing the most vi­tal source of jour­nal­ism about the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try.

In the last few months, we’ve brought our read­ers scoops on the ex­it of Il­lu­mi­na’s CEO and a con­tro­ver­sial board pick at Bio­gen, a look ahead at the de­mand for IPOs and M&A lat­er this year, analy­sis of the FDA’s use of ad­comms, and smart cov­er­age, every day, about the most im­por­tant news in bio­phar­ma.

To­day we’re an­nounc­ing a fur­ther ex­pan­sion of our news­room, as well as an ex­cit­ing leader for our events group as we en­hance our in-per­son and vir­tu­al of­fer­ings.

Grow­ing our break­ing news group across the globe

Rey­nald Cas­tañeda

A pil­lar of our ex­pan­sion here at End­points has been to not on­ly bring you ex­clu­sive news you can’t get any­where else but al­so make sure you nev­er miss im­por­tant sto­ries on tri­al read­outs, fi­nanc­ings, M&A, peo­ple changes and more. Our Ear­ly Edi­tion is in your in­box each US morn­ing and re­lies on a ded­i­cat­ed team of ear­ly-ris­ing jour­nal­ists to pro­duce it.

To strength­en that cov­er­age, we’re adding three new jour­nal­ists who will be based in the UK. They’ll be led by Rey­nald Cas­tañe­da in Lon­don, who will work close­ly with Am­ber Tong in Hong Kong to over­see our morn­ing and overnight news. In the com­ing weeks, Rey­nald and Am­ber will be joined by Ay­isha Shar­ma and An­na Brown as break­ing news re­porters in Lon­don, who will help start our day ear­li­er and bring their ex­per­tise to you.

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Ay­isha Shar­ma

Rey­nald has a decade of ex­pe­ri­ence as a health­care jour­nal­ist, most re­cent­ly as Reuters In­sight’s head of phar­ma re­search. Pri­or to that, he was an ed­i­tor for Clin­i­cal Tri­als Are­na and wrote long-form fea­tures and scoops as an in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist for Glob­al­Da­ta In­sights.

Ay­isha comes to us from Scrip and is based in Lon­don. She’s spent the last two years cov­er­ing the com­mer­cial im­pli­ca­tions of clin­i­cal tri­als, deals and drug ap­provals and will re­port on de­vel­op­ing busi­ness and sci­ence news out of Eu­rope and ear­ly in the US day.

An­na Brown

An­na joins us from In­for­ma Con­nect, where she was a se­nior dig­i­tal pro­duc­er de­vel­op­ing and mod­er­at­ing events for Bio­Process In­ter­na­tion­al. The pro­duc­tion of com­plex new ther­a­pies is one of the most im­por­tant sto­ries in biotech, and in ad­di­tion to break­ing news, she will help grow our cov­er­age of the man­u­fac­tur­ing side of the in­dus­try. She has a mas­ter’s de­gree in bio­med­ical sci­ences from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol and is al­so based in Lon­don.

Ex­pand­ing our cov­er­age

As End­points has grown, we’ve al­so be­gun to think about parts of health­care that look sim­i­lar to biotech. We’re in­ter­est­ed in in­no­va­tion and change, how it gets fund­ed and in­cen­tivized, who reg­u­lates and gate-keeps it, and how it af­fects the lives of cus­tomers and pa­tients.

Ly­dia Ram­sey Pflanz­er

To lead that ex­pan­sion, we’ve hired Ly­dia Ram­sey Pflanz­er, and she’ll fo­cus on grow­ing our cov­er­age in the world of health tech. In the same way that the world of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is al­ways be­ing changed by bi­o­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion, we plan to launch new cov­er­age of how the broad­er world of health­care is be­ing changed by tech and busi­ness in­no­va­tion.

Ly­dia comes to us from In­sid­er, where she helped build the pub­li­ca­tion’s health­care cov­er­age, break­ing news on drug-pric­ing de­bates, chron­i­cling the fall of Ther­a­nos and cov­er­ing bio­phar­ma. She then helped launch their health tech cov­er­age, fo­cus­ing on how com­pa­nies rang­ing from star­tups to the biggest tech com­pa­nies in the world were try­ing to make their mark in health­care.

Lia De­G­root

Ly­dia joins us in Au­gust, work­ing from Den­ver, and will start to build out this ex­cit­ing new area of cov­er­age for us.

As part of our ex­pan­sion, we’ve al­so in­vest­ed more in our Wash­ing­ton team, which has long been led by Zach Bren­nan. Ear­li­er this month, we hired Lia De­G­root to add to our cov­er­age of the FDA and health pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion on Capi­tol Hill. Lia joins End­points from In­side Health Pol­i­cy, where she cov­ered the FDA, and will work close­ly with Zach and the rest of our bio­phar­ma team.

Evolv­ing our ed­i­to­r­i­al and spon­sor events

As End­points News has grown, so have the ways in which we con­nect with read­ers out­side our sto­ries. We now have a thriv­ing events busi­ness, with ma­jor gath­er­ings in Boston, San Fran­cis­co and Lon­don, as well as our ro­bust on­line events busi­ness. We of­ten talk here about the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in bio­phar­ma and the pow­er of our pub­li­ca­tion to con­nect our read­ers with each oth­er through in-depth, so­phis­ti­cat­ed con­ver­sa­tion and net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Car­rie Cliggett

This month, Car­rie Cliggett joined us as our new VP of events to lead the growth of this part of our con­tent and our busi­ness in­to the next phase of its growth. Car­rie joins us from Wolters Kluw­er, where she was VP, glob­al event man­age­ment, af­ter a ca­reer that has spanned Bloomberg, New York In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy and For­tune.

Over the next sev­er­al years, you can ex­pect to see more stand-alone events from us, more high-pro­file in­ter­views with news­mak­ers, more op­por­tu­ni­ties for con­nec­tion and net­work­ing with peers in the in­dus­try, and a con­tin­u­a­tion of the ex­pert­ly pro­duced, deeply in­tel­li­gent con­tent and con­ver­sa­tion that our read­ers and busi­ness part­ners have long trust­ed us to cre­ate.

Car­rie will work with Ryan McRae, our chief rev­enue of­fi­cer, as well as the stel­lar End­points events and part­ner­ship teams that many of you al­ready know.

This is an ex­cit­ing time at End­points, and our part­ners at the Fi­nan­cial Times have helped make pos­si­ble many of these new hires, as well as our hires from ear­li­er in the year who are al­ready thriv­ing in­side the (vir­tu­al) news­room.

In ad­di­tion to adding great peo­ple, we’re al­so con­tin­u­ous­ly think­ing about how we serve our read­ers bet­ter, get­ting you the in­for­ma­tion you need when you need it. You can ex­pect more im­prove­ments to our site and our newslet­ter in the months to come.

In the mean­time, keep an eye out for more break­ing news, more great re­port­ing and analy­sis, and more chances to con­vene and hear from the biggest names in the in­dus­try. We’re glad to have you as our read­ers!