Featured Physician Executive: Nancy Simonian, MD

Every Friday, we feature a physician executive here on NonClinicalJobs.com. Dr. Nancy Simonian is our featured physician executive this week.

Nancy Simonian, MD, is the Chief Medical Officer at Millennium, The Takeda Oncology Company. She is the featured thought leader on PharmaVOICE this month and you can read that article here.

Here's a snippet about Dr. Simonian from a press release:

Nancy Simonian (Wayland, Mass.) joined Millennium in 2001 to lead the Company's clinical development efforts, and in 2006 was named Chief Medical Officer. She is responsible for all clinical, regulatory, pharmacovigilance and development project management functions at the Company. Prior to joining Millennium, she held a clinical research position at Biogen. Board-certified in neurology, Nancy was previously an assistant clinical professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

You can read about her accomplishments on the Millennium corporate website. Speaking of Millennium, they currently have 3 physicians on their senior management team: 

1. Deborah Dunsire, M.D., President & CEO
2. Christophe Bianchi, M.D., Executive Vice President
3. Nancy Simonian, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Clinical, Medical and Regulatory Affairs

Considering that the senior management team includes 10 people, 3/10 are physicians. You don't see that too often in the corporate world.

Meet some industry Chief Scientific Officers

Would you like to meet some Chief Scientific Officers (CSOs)? What exactly does a CSO do? They keyword here is "strategy." Are you able to integrate scientific strategy with business strategy and communicate things clearly to both internal and external stakeholders? These CSOs are very powerful people in the world of pharma.

According to a recent article on PharmaVOICE, the Chief Scientific Officer "helps set a company's strategy, interacts with investors and board of directors, and helps people understand the science behind new products." It's really a combination of public relations (PR) both externally and internally. They need strong corporate leadership skills that includes a considerable amount of ownership and strategy development.

So who are some of these industry CSOs?

• Julian Adams, PhD (Infinity Pharmaceuticals)
  
• Joseph Bolen, PhD (Millennium, the Takeda Oncology Company)
  
• Charles Cantor, PhD (Sequenom)
• Timothy Clackson, PhD (Ariad Pharmaceuticals)
  
• Kevin Judice, PhD (Achaogen)
• Ruther McKernan, PhD (Pfizer Regenerative Medicine)
• Martin Petkovich, PhD (Cytochroma)
• Barry Polisky, PhD (MDRNA)
• Jasbir Seehra, PhD (Acceleron Pharma)
• Marc Tessier-Lavigne, PhD (Genentech)
  

To view the PharmaVOICE article and to meet these CSOs, click here (will open as a PDF).

Congrats to Dr. Deborah Dunsire!

Congrats to Deborah Dunsire, M.D.!

The Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) announced that its 2009 “Woman of the Year” is Dr. Deborah Dunsire, President and Chief Executive Officer of Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company. She also spoke at the 2007 MIT Sloan BioInnovations.

Uloric (Febuxostat) approved by the FDA for gout

Uloric (TMX-67 or febuxostat) was approved by the FDA for the treatment of gout. It's been over 40 years since the FDA has approved a new drug specifically for gout. Febuxostat is a highly potent non-purine selective inhibitor of xanthine oxidasewas and it was approved by the European Union (EU) last year, and now we have the FDA approval this year. We're always lagging behind the EU - I wonder if we'll ever catch up. Uloric is made by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited.