Lovisa Afzelius is an origination partner at Flagship Pioneering and the former SVP of Strategy & Operations at Flagship-founded Cogen Immune Medicines, now known as Repertoire Immune Medicines. A computational scientist by training, she has two decades of leadership experience and a passion for data-driven drug discovery, from early inception to clinical development across multiple therapeutic areas.

Previously, Lovisa built and led Pfizer’s systems immunology function and served as executive director of clinical programs. In this role, she launched several Phase II studies across autoimmune indications and as a member of the Inflammation & Immunology Research Unit leadership team, Lovisa co-managed the portfolio from early target discovery to Phase II clinical trials across all immunological assets. In addition, she served on Pfizer’s Worldwide R&D Data Strategy Committee.

In 2017, Lovisa co-founded Elsa.science, a digital health company in the rheumatoid arthritis space where she serves as chairman of the board. She also serves on the board of the Swedish New England Chamber of Commerce. Before moving to the US in 2013, Lovisa was CEO of BioChromix Pharma.

Lovisa began her career at AstraZeneca as Project Director, Global In Vitro Metabolism Leader and Computational Chemist across cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Lovisa has received numerous accolades for her work: she was included in the top 100 ​“most influential persons under age 40 in Sweden” by Affärsvärlden, and ​“scientist of tomorrow” at the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations’ 30th anniversary. Lovisa received the Rosenön Award for best thesis of the year within the field of pharmacodynamics/​pharmacokinetics in Sweden.

Lovisa holds a Ph.D. in computational chemistry from Uppsala University, a Master of Science in integrative pharmacology from Gothenburg University as well as an M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Theonie is a principal at Flagship Pioneering where she conceives, builds and grows the science, intellectual property and business strategy that form the foundation of Flagship’s next breakthrough startups. She co-founded Alltrna and serves as its chief innovation officer. 

Prior to joining Flagship, Theonie completed her graduate studies in cell and molecular biology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focused on replication fork dynamics in the context of cancer development and therapeutics. Theonie has received several awards and has been granted multiple fellowships for her academic work, including an NIH NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship. During her graduate studies, Theonie held multiple leadership positions on Executive and Curriculum Committees. She also completed a Wharton Business Foundations Specialization and was a mentor at the yearly Larta Institute NIH CAP FeedForward Sessions. 

Theonie is a Business Advisory Board member of the Harvard Institute for RNA Medicine and a member of the Bioscience & Investor Inclusion Group (BIIG) Diverse Talent Network Group. Theonie’s work has resulted in multiple pending patents and publications, including articles in Nature Biotechnology, Molecular Cell and Journal of Biological Chemistry.

91. tRNA therapies, Lovisa Afzelius, Founding CEO, Theonie Anastassiadis, Co-founder & CIO, Alltrna

Synopsis: 
Stanley Crooke is Founder and CEO of n-Lorem Foundation, a nonprofit with the goal of discovering, developing and providing experimental ASO treatments to nano-rare patients for free for life. He joins us for a discussion about the business model behind rare diseases and how n-Lorem is looking to industrialize and scale the treatment of this unique population. Stanley talks about the challenges behind developing and bringing a new modality to the clinic, the company’s collaboration with the FDA, and how n-Lorem seeks to be sustainable and scalable over time.

Biography:
Dr. Crooke is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of n-Lorem, a nonprofit foundation focused on providing treatments for patients with nano-rare disease (1 to 30 patients worldwide), which he initiated in January 2020. Prior to n- Lorem, Dr. Crooke founded and was
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Lead Scientist of Ionis Pharmaceuticals. During his tenure at Ionis, he led the scientific development of a new platform for drug discovery, antisense technology and the creation of one of the largest and more advanced development pipelines in the biotechnology industry, and commercialized several antisense drugs including, Spinraza, Tegsedi and others. Early in Dr. Crooke’s career, he led the creation of the first broad anticancer program in the industry at Bristol-Myers, bringing numerous anticancer drugs to the market in the first five years of his career. He then assumed responsibility for worldwide R&D (president) at SmithKline Beckman (now GSK). During his tenure at SKB, Dr. Crooke led the restructuring of R&D and the development of several drugs that were commercialized. Dr. Crooke has also contemporaneously led a successful academic career becoming a full professor at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School where he trained a number of PhD students and won several teaching awards. Dr. Crooke has been an active scientist throughout his career as well. Dr. Crooke has received a number of awards, most recently, Prix Galein Roy Vagellos Pro Bono Humanum Award, the American Chemical Society’s E.B. Hershberg Award for Important Discoveries in Medicinally Active Substances, the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society, the Scrip Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2019 Massry Prize. Dr. Crooke received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees and house staff training at Baylor College of Medicine and has been an active scientist throughout his career. In 2021, Dr. Crooke has been named Distinguished Alumnus of both Baylor College of Medicine’s Graduate and Medical schools and named one of the 20 of the most influential biopharma R&D executives by Endpoints News. He has published nearly 600 scientific publications, edited more than 20 books, has numerous patents, and led the development of more than 23 drugs that have been commercialized.

123. Nano-rare patients & rare diseases, Stanley Crooke, Founder & CEO, n-Lorem Foundation

Biotech2050 Podcast is a think tank chronicling the disruptions changing the biotech industry over the next 50 years.

123. Nano-rare patients & rare diseases, Stanley Crooke, Founder & CEO, n-Lorem Foundation

Biotech2050 Podcast

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