MiGenTra, headquartered in Berlin, Germany and MiGenTra Egypt, located with its ‘Facility of the Future’ in Cairo, Egypt, have announced the formation of an International Advisory Board with the purpose to complement in-house capabilities with external top notch expertise and knowledge in the field of Science and Entrepreneurship.
The company announced that new memers of International Advisory Board are:
Heidi Hunter, President Specialty Solutions Business at Cardinal Health, US
Petra Reinke, Professor of Medicine and founding director of the Berlin Center for Advanced Therapies (BeCAT), Germany
Shaheer Bardissi, Executive Board Member at Minapharm Pharmaceuticals, Egypt
The international Advisory Board will advise and provide guidance in order to support future product development and regulatory, market excess and export strategies.
MiGenTra’s mission to enhance the accessibility to critical healthcare transforming medicines at affordable prices for Egypt, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) while simultaneously strengthening regional and local manufacturing capacities. In doing so the company responds to urgent unmet medical needs, in line with efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as well as the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB). The Advisory Board supports and will work closely with the MiGenTra management on all matters relating to the companies mission, the company said.
“MiGenTra as part of the Minapharm group pledges to ensure equitable access to essential medicines on the African continent, thereby contributing to the Global Health initiative and transforming the lives of millions of people”, says Dr. Lutz Hilbrich, Chief Executive Officer of MiGenTra. “We are delighted and proud to have internationally renowned individuals joining us as our advisors. It is an exciting endeavor with the chance to make a difference and we are looking forward to collaborating closely with them in the future on all aspects a start-up company like MiGenTra is facing”, he concludes.
About the members of MiGenTra’s International Advisory Board:
Heidi Hunter, President Specialty Solutions Business at Cardinal Health, US
Heidi Hunter has over 25 years of experience in biotech across the pharmaceutical value chain, from clinical and commercial development through to launch execution. She is currently President at Cardinal Health, where she leads the Specialty Solutions Business. Prior to Cardinal Health, Ms. Hunter was Senior Vice President of the Global Immunology Business Unit at UCB in Brussels. She has also held leadership positions at Boehringer Ingelheim as Senior Vice President and General Manager in its Global Biosimilars Business, and at IQVIA as Vice President of Global Business Partnerships Commercial Solutions. Ms. Hunter also held senior leadership positions in commercial and strategic marketing for biologics and oncology at Centocor, a J&J company. She also led oncology business at Wyeth (today part of Pfizer) in the U.S. and women’s health at Novo Nordisk in Denmark. Early in Ms. Hunter’s career, she led sales and marketing at Ciba-Geigy in Switzerland (today part of Novartis). She is currently on the board of Vicore Pharma and Sutro Biopharma. Ms. Hunter earned B.A. from The University of Michigan and her M.B.A. from The University of Chicago.
Petra Reinke, Professor of Medicine and founding director of the Berlin Center for Advanced Therapies (BeCAT), Germany
Petra Reinke is Professor of Internal Medicine, Nephrology and Transplantation at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and was Medical Director of Nephrology and Transplantation and Head of the Kidney Transplant Outpatient Clinic. She is the founding director of the Berlin Center for Advanced Therapies (BeCAT) and head of the GMP Facility for developing new T-cell-based therapeutic strategies.
She has developed several novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches (e. g. immunobiomarkers, targeting of memory T cells, adoptive Teff/Treg cell therapies).
She is one of the founding members of the (BIH)-Berlin-(Brandenburg) Centre for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), was a member of the steering committee 2006 – 2021 and vice speaker in 2021. She is a member of the BIH research platform Multiscale Omics, Humanized Model Systems and Cell Engineering and Digital Medicine. She was 2019 – 2021 CART Coordinator (Charité) of the European University Hospital Alliance (EUHA).
She is a program board member of the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform of the Medical Research Council (MRC, UKRMP) and a member of several editorial boards of various scientific journals and has published more than 300 peer reviewed articles.
Shaheer Bardissi, Executive Board Member at Minapharm Pharmaceuticals, Egypt
Shaheer Bardissi, with a doctorate in gene-based immunotherapy, is an executive board member at Minapharm pharmaceuticals, where he has been assigned the responsibility of aiding the steering of the scientific and business growth strategy of the Minapharm group in the field of immuno-oncology, vaccines for infectious diseases, and gene and cell-based therapies in collaboration with its global subsidiaries. He previously worked at BioNTech SE and contributed to the successful development of immunotherapeutic technologies in the field of cell and gene therapy. He obtained his PhD from Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, with a focus on gene-based immunotherapy. Prior to that, he completed his Masters of Science in Molecular Medicine at University College London, Bachelors of Science in Biomedical Sciences from King’s college London, and also holds a Master’s of Science in quantitative management sciences and healthcare data analytics from Duke University, North Carolina, USA.