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Session 502
Two Sides of the Same Coin: Understanding Partnership Perspective
Leonardo da Vinci once said, "The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding." How often are both sides of a partnership understood? How often is just one side of the story seen? The alliance manager plays a critical role in understanding each partner's perspectives and communicating a balanced point of view to the partnered teams, facilitating solutions and joint problem solving.
Takeda follows a "Partnerships Playbook" that outlines industry best practices across the lifecycle of an alliance. However, process discipline must be married with behavioral skill competency to be most effective. To demonstrate it in action, two of Takeda's key partners were invited to share their point of view on challenging situations that have been successfully navigated due to this winning combination of skill, plus best practice. Join this panel session with alliance managers from Takeda, Wave Life Sciences, and Adimab for a lively discussion that will explore the different dynamics of a collaboration and what makes a partnership successful. Key topics covered will include the impact of decision making for both partners, how conflict can be a useful tool for advancing the partnership, the importance of collaborative behaviors and mutual transparency, and how the joint alliance management team model can enable trust—a critical enabler of partnership value.
Key takeaways:
- Trust as the common denominator to facilitate flexibility
- The positive impact of following alliance best practices through the partnership lifecycle
- Alliance managers as the drivers of early risk identification and mitigation
Moderator:
Hila Bahar, PhD, MBA
Associate Director
Takeda
Hila Bahar, PhD MBA is an Associate Director at the Center of Excellence Alliance/Partnership Management, R&D Partnership Office at Takeda, where she is responsible for leading and developing the Allinces' Healthcheck initiative and managing outcomes.
Before joining the Center of Excellence, Hila was a senior Alliance Manager at Takeda's Immon-Oncology Drug Development Unit where she was responsible for leading and developing the Alliance Management function, including managing large and complex pre-clinical and early clinical stage Alliances focusing on biologics and cell therapy. Prior to that, she was a Director of Research at Radius Health was the scientific lead for Abaloparatide (Tymlos) for the treatment of osteoporosis, her role included managing all the external collaborations for the development of the drug.
Hila completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. She earned her PhD in Medical Sciences and MBA from Tel Aviv University in Israel.
Panelists:
Suman Deb, PhD
Senior Manager Collaborations Discovery Operations
Takeda Pharmaceuticals
Suman Deb is a Senior Manager of Collaborations at the Immuno-Oncology R&D unit (IO-DDU) at Takeda, as part of the IO-DDU Portfolio and Alliance Management group, where she has lead Alliance Management function for multiple partnerships initiated within the Takeda IO-DDU for the past 3 years. Suman manages dynamic discovery stage alliances with highly innovative external partners based in the US and Europe. Suman collaborates with internal scientists as well as Takeda partners to optimize alliance planning, support and delivery on goals for the alliances. Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited is a global, research and development-driven pharmaceutical company committed to bringing better health and a brighter future to patients by translating science into life-changing medicines. Takeda conducts R&D both internally and with partners to stay at the leading edge of innovation.
Before joining Takeda, Suman was a Senior Quality Assurance Manager at GE Healthcare Life Sciences. Prior to that she was a scientist at Charles River Labs.
Suman completed her post-doctoral fellowship in cell biology at Harvard School of Public Health. She acquired her Ph.D. from the University of South Florida in the field of Medical Sciences.
Jeffrey C. Hurley
Senior Director, GBD Global Alliance Management Lead
Jeff is a recent employee of Shire and Takeda, joining the company in January 2018. Prior to Takeda, Jeff spent over 28 years with Eli Lilly and Company in a variety of roles and locations. Jeff has been in the Alliance Management function since 2008, and with Takeda has managed multiple discovery, development, and commercial alliances that span diverse therapeutic areas in Rare Diseases, Hematology, Neuroscience, and GI.
Currently, Jeff supports a number of commercial alliances and licenses, highlighted by the Trintellix alliance with Lundbeck.
At Lilly, Jeff supported alliances and collaborations in Lilly's innovative Device, Delivery, and Connected Systems organization as well as several commercial alliances, including partnerships with Sanofi, GSK, Kowa Company Ltd., Torii Pharmaceuticals, United Therapeutics, and Janssen Biotech.
Prior to his role in Alliance Management, Jeff held several leadership roles in operations, sales, marketing, disease management, and new product planning.
Jeff earned a bachelor's degree in Government from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from the University of Michigan.
Lynelle Pittet, CSAP, PhD
Senior Director, Alliance and Program Management
Wave Life Sciences
Lynnelle Pittet is currently Senior Director, Alliance and Program Management at Wave Life Sciences, where she is responsible for leading and developing the Alliance Management function. She is the alliance manager for Wave's collaborations with Pfizer (hepatic diseases), Takeda (neurological diseases), and Deep Genomics (artificial intelligence to identify novel therapies for neuromuscular diseases).Lynnelle is passionate about working with others to develop novel drugs and treatments for patients.
Previously, Lynnelle worked at Cerulean Pharma as Director of Program and Alliance Management, Epizyme as Senior Manager of Alliance and Program Management, and Selecta Biosciences as a Senior Scientist, where she started doing alliance management.In addition, Lynnelle taught at Simmons College, Harvard University, and Montana State University.
Lynnelle has a PhD in Veterinary Molecular Biology (now Microbiology and Immunology) from Montana State University, a MBA from Simmons College, and a BA in Biology (minor in Chemistry) from Whitman College. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard School of Public Health and Boston University School of Medicine. Lynnelle has been a member of ASAP for several years and achieved CA-AM certification in 2017 and CSAP certification in 2019.
Kristin Rookey
Senior Director Alliance Management and Businsess
Adimab
Kristin Rookey is a Senior Director of Strategic Alliances at Adimab where she has lead the Alliance Management team for the past 7 years.The Alliance Management team shares responsibility for the relationships of over 65 partners, including many top pharma companies as well as numerous mid-size and start-up biotech companies in the US, Europe and Asia.The Alliance Management team coordinates roughly 30 funded discovery projects annually, and also manages the implementation of the Adimab Platform with six pharma partners.Kristin is also heavily involved in assessing external technologies for in-licensing.Adimab is a leading technology provider for antibody-based drug discovery, whereby Adimab partners have initiated more than 275 therapeutic programs and progressed 25 therapeutic programs into the clinic.
Before joining Adimab, Kristin was a group head at Dyax where she was responsible for the Lead Discovery team and transferring the Dyax technology to over a dozen pharma and biotechnology companies.Prior to that she was a scientist at Anadys Pharmaceuticals.
Kristin acquired her Master's degree from the University of Southern Maine in the field of Immunology.
Neta Zach, PhD
Director, Neuroscience Partnerships
Takeda Pharmaceuticals
Neta Zach, PhD is a Director of alliance management at the Neuroscience therapeutic area unit at Takeda, as part of the Neuroscience portfolio strategy group, where she is responsible for leading and developing the Alliance Management function, including drug development partnerships, and digital partnerships.
Before joining Takeda, Neta was Director and Head of the Academic Affairs and Networks group at Teva Pharmaceutical where she managed academic collaborations and external funding for all CNS discovery and early stage pipeline projects, focusing on neurodegenerative diseases and neuropsychiatry. Prior to that, she was also Chief Scientific Officer of ALS non-profit Prize4Life and managed programs on ALS drug discovery as well as biological and digital biomarkers. Before joining Prize4Life, she was a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania in the biology of behavior program.
Neta completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University under a Fulbright Scholarship. She earned her PhD from Hebrew University in computational neuroscience and holds an MPA from the University of Pennsylvania.