Outlining How Clinical Experience Can Impact Commercialization in Oncology

An interest in intratumor heterogeneity and breast cancer stem cell tumor evolution turned a 2-year fellow program into a 6-year tenure at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for Vanessa Almendro-Navarro, PhD, MBA.

In a conversation with CancerNetwork®, Almendro, who recently joined City of Hope as chief commercialization officer, discussed her clinical background as a fellow and beyond, as well as how those experiences may impact her new role at the institution. Initially a faculty member of a clinic in Barcelona, an interest in breast cancer research being pioneered at Dana-Farber drew her to the Boston area and served as a “fantastic experience,” effectively exposing her to the biotech ecosystem and serving as a key steppingstone in her career.

Next, she highlighted how her clinical experience, both in Barcelona and in Boston, impacted her current role at City of Hope, including a realization that several barriers impair the speed by which scientific discoveries ultimately shape patient impact. Specifically, she emphasized that her clinical work helped to highlight the perspectives of all stakeholders in cancer treatment.

Transcript:

I joined Dana-Farber in 2013 when I was still faculty at the hospital clinic in Barcelona, Spain. The reason why I joined Dana-Farber at that time was because I was intrigued in understanding intratumor heterogeneity and breast cancer stem cell tumor evolution. Dana-Farber was one of the groups at that time that was pioneering in this research. I joined the organization for what was supposed to be a 2-year fellow program, and I ended up spending 6 years there. It was a fantastic experience, and it helped me to discover the biotech ecosystem within the Boston area; that was very determinant for me to then make the decision to stay in Boston, not go back to Barcelona, and then continue my career here in industry.

My clinical experience, both at the hospital clinic in Spain and then at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for almost 10 years, helped me to realize that when we want to advance scientific discoveries into patient impact, there are several barriers that we need to overcome. Often, when we think about those barriers…commercialization is thought of as the last step in the process. Commercialization criteria and input are things that should not happen at the end of the ideation and discovery processes; they should happen at the beginning.

For me, that experience helped me to shape the way that I think about advancing innovation towards products that can impact patient care. Importantly, having had that experience working in the clinical setting, it gave me the ability to understand the patient perspective, the physician perspective, [and] the nurse practitioner [perspective]. Most importantly, as well, I can connect that type of information with my experience into how biopharma, biotech, and the venture and investment community think about advancing innovation. That’s… the full context into how that experience can help me in thinking about advancing commercialization at City of Hope.