The right mix mat­ters in bio­phar­ma lead­er­ship

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Break­ing the bio­phar­ma glass ceil­ing isn’t just a moral is­sue; it’s a share­hold­er is­sue. McK­in­sey re­port­ed in a re­cent study that com­pa­nies in the top quar­tile for gen­der di­ver­si­ty are 15 per­cent more like­ly to gen­er­ate fi­nan­cial re­turns above the in­dus­try av­er­age; those in the top quar­tile for racial and eth­nic di­ver­si­ty are 35 per­cent more like­ly to do so.

The right mix of ex­pe­ri­ence, per­spec­tives and back­grounds is al­so a pa­tient is­sue. Whether it’s choos­ing the right end­point for a prospec­tive ther­a­py or mar­ket­ing a prod­uct in a way that will en­able physi­cians and pa­tients to ac­cess the right med­i­cine at the right time, more com­pa­nies are be­gin­ning to un­der­stand the need to di­ver­si­fy their ranks and groom lead­er­ship teams as di­verse as the clin­i­cians and fam­i­lies they’re try­ing to reach. It’s good busi­ness and it’s good for pa­tients.

There are bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies mak­ing in­cred­i­ble progress in the di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion space. Oth­ers want to di­ver­si­fy and are ask­ing for help to broad­en ex­ec­u­tive and board search­es out­side of what are of­ten ho­moge­nous per­son­al net­works. That’s why the Biotech­nol­o­gy In­no­va­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion — the world’s largest biotech trade and ad­vo­ca­cy group — is launch­ing a new in­dus­try­wide ini­tia­tive called The Right Mix Mat­ters.

Based on my con­ver­sa­tions, a crit­i­cal mass in biotech al­ready knows that we have a pipeline prob­lem. We should be fas­tid­i­ous in our ef­forts to pro­mote more women, mi­nori­ties and LGBT ex­ec­u­tives up the ranks. Many of us in C-suites and board rooms do feel a sense of ur­gency: More in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors and ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist are look­ing at lead­er­ship di­ver­si­ty as a fac­tor in where to put cap­i­tal. Frankly, this needs to be a wake-up call for our sec­tor.

Na­tion­al­ly, on­ly sev­en to nine per­cent of CEO po­si­tions at biotech com­pa­nies are filled by women, ac­cord­ing to na­tion­al sur­veys by Lift­stream. It still hap­pens that when I go to net­work­ing events with my fel­low CEOs, I’m of­ten the on­ly woman in the room.

Like al­most every fe­male physi­cian of my era in Scot­land, I re­ceived my med­ical train­ing dur­ing a time when it was as­sumed we would quit our jobs or work part-time when start­ing a fam­i­ly. As a doc­tor in train­ing, I lost count of the num­ber of times I was asked to make a cup of tea for every­one while my male col­leagues talked about their ca­reer paths with the con­sul­tants.

I be­came a doc­tor be­cause I care deeply about the wel­fare of pa­tients, and be­came a rheuma­tol­o­gist be­cause I’ve al­ways been at­tract­ed to the most con­found­ing ar­eas of med­i­cine. I dis­cov­ered help­ing pa­tients suf­fer­ing from vex­ing con­di­tions al­most al­ways re­quired more than even the most de­ter­mined doc­tor’s best ef­forts. The in­ter­ven­tions of the rheuma­tol­o­gist, nephrol­o­gists and oth­er spe­cial­ists might be life-sav­ing, but it was the phys­io­ther­a­pist, wound nurse and oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pist who made pa­tients’ lives liv­able. This recog­ni­tion that di­verse back­grounds pro­duce the best so­lu­tions has lived with me ever since.

My ca­reer took me to the Unit­ed States for a role in the bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try in clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment. I put in for a trans­fer on the com­mer­cial side, where­upon the head of mar­ket­ing and sales in­formed me, “You are fe­male, Scot­tish and an M.D. You’re just not the right fit.” For­tu­nate­ly, that com­pa­ny even­tu­al­ly got new lead­er­ship, and I found a cham­pi­on in the C-suite who saw some­thing in me. He spon­sored for a com­mer­cial lead­er­ship role even though I didn’t yet have all the ex­pe­ri­ence of the “per­fect” can­di­date. With­out a cham­pi­on will­ing to open the door to that first crack at broad­er lead­er­ship roles, many women and mi­nori­ties in cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca lan­guish in mid­dle man­age­ment in per­pe­tu­ity —un­able to move up and in­to the C-suite.

But I did move up. When I be­came a can­di­date for my first CEO role, I hired a coach to help me in­crease my ef­fec­tive­ness as a com­mu­ni­ca­tor. I pos­sessed that fa­mil­iar fem­i­nine trait of fail­ing to take enough per­son­al cred­it for my role in the suc­cess­es of teams I led. My coach helped me un­der­stand that in­ter­view­ing with boards is not the time to be mod­est. He was right. I learned how to bet­ter sell my cre­den­tials, ex­pe­ri­ence and abil­i­ties, be­com­ing one of the for­tu­nate few to crack the glass ceil­ing in the bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try.

As the cen­ter­piece of BIO’s ef­fort, BIO Board­list went live this month. It’s a search­able on­line data­base of di­verse tal­ent where ex­ec­u­tives can nom­i­nate promis­ing tal­ent and where search com­mit­tees can find lead­er­ship can­di­dates that meet their busi­ness needs. The tool was de­ployed by the high-tech in­dus­try in 2017 in the wake of a firestorm ig­nit­ed by the con­tro­ver­sial writ­ings of a Google en­gi­neer that sparked an in­dus­try­wide dis­cus­sion about sex­ism. Now, BIO is bring­ing this tool to the bio­phar­ma sec­tor.

We al­ready have near­ly 50 out­stand­ing, pre-vet­ted can­di­dates who are search­able in BIO Board­list. Our job now is to add more high­ly qual­i­fied, di­verse lead­ers to the data­base. Once we do, BIO Board­list will be es­pe­cial­ly help­ful for small­er and emerg­ing bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies that do not yet have a ro­bust hu­man re­sources func­tion or the means to hire ex­ec­u­tive re­cruiters. BIO Board­list can help com­pa­nies iden­ti­fy, lift up and in­clude di­verse ex­ec­u­tives with lead­er­ship qual­i­fi­ca­tions and as­pi­ra­tions.

BIO al­so launched a sec­ond re­source — a di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion toolk­it. We have pooled to­geth­er the best re­sources from suc­cess­ful pro­grams across BIO mem­ber com­pa­nies. Com­pa­nies will find spe­cif­ic HR tem­plates that can be down­loaded and schol­ar­ly pieces and train­ing cours­es on such top­ics as un­con­scious bias, men­tor­ing and spon­sor­ship.

As a prac­tic­ing rheuma­tol­o­gist, I learned that it can take a vil­lage to give pa­tients a life worth liv­ing. Work­ing my way up the ranks to the CEO’s of­fice in bio­phar­ma, I have dis­cov­ered the same of­ten holds true to de­vel­op a med­i­cine worth tak­ing or a clin­i­cal pro­gram worth fund­ing. If you’re lead­ing a biotech com­pa­ny and want to do right by your con­sumers, in­vestors and share­hold­ers, the right mix re­al­ly does mat­ter.


Dr. He­len Tor­ley is CEO of Halozyme Ther­a­peu­tics in San Diego and chairs BIO’s Com­mit­tee on Work­force De­vel­op­ment, Di­ver­si­ty and In­clu­sion. Biotech Voic­es is a con­tributed col­umn writ­ten by se­lect End­points News sub­scribers.

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

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Over the last four years, we’ve honored 80 women whose extraordinary accomplishments have changed the game in biopharma R&D. You can now nominate someone to be highlighted in this year’s special report. Details are here.

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FDA spells out how can­cer drug de­vel­op­ers can use one tri­al for both ac­cel­er­at­ed and full ap­provals

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.

Clay Siegall, Morphimmune CEO

Up­dat­ed: Ex-Seagen chief Clay Sie­gall emerges as CEO of pri­vate biotech

Clay Siegall will be back in the CEO seat, taking the helm of a private startup working on targeted cancer therapies.

It’s been almost a year since Siegall resigned from Seagen, the biotech he co-founded and led for more than 20 years, in the wake of domestic violence allegations by his then-wife. His eventual successor, David Epstein, sold the company to Pfizer in a $43 billion deal unveiled last week.

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FDA ad­vi­sors unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval for Bio­gen's ALS drug

A panel of outside advisors to the FDA unanimously recommended that the agency grant accelerated approval to Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen despite the drug failing the primary goal of its Phase III study, an endorsement that could pave a path forward for the treatment.

By a 9-0 vote, members of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee said there was sufficient evidence that tofersen’s effect on a certain protein associated with ALS is reasonably likely to predict a benefit for patients. But panelists stopped short of advocating for a full approval, voting 3-5 against (with one abstention) and largely citing the failed pivotal study.

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No­vo Nordisk oral semaglu­tide tri­al shows re­duc­tion in blood sug­ar, plus weight loss

Novo Nordisk is testing higher levels of its oral version of its GLP-1, semaglutide, and its type 2 diabetes trial results released today show reductions in blood sugar as well as weight loss.

In the Phase IIIb trial, Novo compared its oral semaglutide in 25 mg and 50 mg doses with the 14 mg version that’s currently the maximum approved dose. The trial looked at how the doses compared when added to a stable dose of one to three oral antidiabetic medicines in people with type 2 diabetes who were in need of an intensified treatment.

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Ly­me vac­cine test com­ple­tion is pushed back by a year as Pfiz­er, Val­ne­va say they'll ad­just tri­al

Valneva and Pfizer have adjusted the end date for the Phase III study of their investigational Lyme disease vaccine, pushing it back by a year after issues at a contract researcher led to thousands of US patients being dropped from the test.

In a March 20 update to clinicaltrials.gov, Valneva and Pfizer moved the primary completion date on the trial, called VALOR, from the end of 2024 to the end of 2025.

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Stuart Peltz, former PTC Therapeutics CEO

Stu­art Peltz re­signs as PTC Ther­a­peu­tics CEO af­ter 25 years

Stuart Peltz, the longtime CEO of PTC Therapeutics who’s led the rare disease drug developer since its founding 25 years ago, is stepping down.

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Bet­ter Ther­a­peu­tics cuts 35% of staff while await­ing dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic ap­proval

Digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics announced on Thursday that it’s cutting 35% of its staff as it awaits FDA clearance for its first product.

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