Increasing Representation in Pharma
This May, Roivant Sciences and Roivant Social Ventures (RSV) partnered to launch our inaugural Diversity in Pharma Internship Program, providing real-world drug development experience to qualified PharmD students from diverse backgrounds.
Diana is interning with Psivant, where she will:
Create a strategic plan to choose indications where a small molecule therapeutic would have advantages over an antibody that targets the same protein, while simultaneously analyzing the potential benefits and drawbacks of each approach.
Formulate a plausible explanation for the unforeseen failure of a clinical trial that was initially predicted to yield positive results.
Outline a chemistry strategy aimed at identifying potent tool compounds, which may serve as the springboard for the initiation of a new discovery program.
Perform a comprehensive evaluation of a potential drug target to assess its compatibility with Psivant's proprietary QUAISAR computational platform.
Diana was introduced to the healthcare field through three personal experiences that drove her to pursue science, research, and pharmacy work. As a child, her grandpa passed away from brain cancer and watching him navigate the illness initially drove her to explore scientific research and medicine. Later in life, Diana watched her partner at the time suffer through a bipolar diagnosis, where finding the proper medication combination saved their life. Seeing this direct impact piqued her passion in pharmaceuticals. After pivoting her career to pursue pharmacy school, Diana learned that her grandmother passed away from a preventable medication error, meaningfully reaffirming the importance of the work she had chosen. While these experiences were difficult to navigate, Diana is grateful that they ignited her deep passion for patient care and drug advancement.
Diana has developed her leadership experiences to date through:
Completing Inpatient Internships and Technician Rotations with Duke's University, Regional, and Raleigh Hospitals.
Becoming a Student College of Clinical Pharmacy 2022 Pocket Guide Contributor and Editor.
Serving as a Lab Assistant in Dr. Erin Kolonko's Organic Chemistry Lab and Dr. Jodi O'Donnell's Inorganic Chemistry Lab.
Conducting research projects on isothermal and non-isothermal cold crystallizations, kinetic and thermodynamic parameters, and analyzing liquid crystal porphyrin sensors via UV/VIS spectroscopy.
We sat down with Diana to learn more about her proudest accomplishments to date, what personally drives her work, and how her summer internship will impact her career development.
What are your proudest accomplishments to date?
"I am so proud that I was able to graduate with a degree in biochemistry and get into Eshelman's PharmD program, which is the top School of Pharmacy in the United States. I'm the first person in my family to pursue the medical field, or even a science driven field, and it was a long journey to get here!
I am also proud that I took on research work with Dr. Jodi O'Donnell in thermodynamics and kinetics, which I was not initially comfortable with. I was able to use that opportunity to dive into real-world synthetizations and how they could drive development needs and next steps. The experience molded me and allowed me to build confidence to push myself and become comfortable taking on more advanced science that can at first seem intimidating."
What type of impact do you hope to make through your work?
"As simple as it may sound- being able to help people through my work. Whether that be through helping discover or develop a new drug that has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives, or having direct conversations with patients that can prevent medication errors. In my eyes, as long as I'm putting my best foot forward and keeping the patient as my number one priority, I don't think any contribution could feel too small or too large when it comes to my career in pharmacy!"
What are you most looking forward to about your internship this summer?
"With my love for science, biology, and chemistry, drug discovery is the avenue of industry that I want to know the most about. I can't wait to see how things actually get done in drug discovery! In RSV's Making Medicines course we had CEOs from industry come and speak with us and hearing their real-life stories made me so excited to learn more about this specialty. Even in interviewing for my role I already got to start that learning process through hearing about the clinical perspective and how imperative data is to helping find the most relevant targets for patient populations. I'm ready to dive in!"
Diversity in Pharma Internship Program
Equal access to medicine and medical care should be a fundamental human right. Unfortunately, people of color, women, low-income populations, and the uninsured often cannot access the medicine they need either– because they cannot afford it, or because it has not been developed.
Biopharma offers a solution to healthcare inequities, but systemic issues exist within the space– including a lack of diversity in leadership. The pharmaceutical industry is overwhelmingly white and male, especially in the C-suite. Biopharma executives in North America, Europe, and Australia are less than a third female, according to a 2021 report from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. About one in five CEOs is female only one in four is a person of color, and in the broader healthcare field, only 1% of CEOs are women—the lowest of any industry (Korn Ferry).
By increasing racial and gender diversity in future leaders of the biopharma industry, we can start to dismantle these inequities.
During the Spring 2023 semester all interns completed RSV's "Making Medicines" course at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the top ranked School of Pharmacy in the United States. This innovative course was designed to introduce PharmD students to the new drug approval process and key issues in drug discovery, pre-clinical testing, clinical trials, FDA approval, and global access to medicines. The course is taught by Lindsay Androski, RSV Founder & CEO, and Scott Singleton, Associate Professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.