Nicholas Warne Drug Delivery Industry

Annette Bak, Ph.D., MBA leads Advanced Drug Delivery at Astra Zeneca and serves on the Pharmaceutical Sciences leadership team. Advanced Drug Delivery has the mission to transform diverse modalities, small molecules and new modalities alike, into investigational medicines and is a global organization based in Sweden, UK, and US.Since joining AstraZeneca in 2016, Annette has been instrumental in delivering new modality formulations for clinical studies, notably VEGF mRNA for cardiac regeneration, building intracellular drug delivery capabilities, and sponsoring initiatives on augmenting drug discovery with artificial intelligence. Annette previously worked for Amgen and Merck in the US with responsibility for small molecule and peptide formulations, building outsourcing partnerships in China, in licensing and partnership evaluations, and contributing to getting small molecule therapies to the market.Annette has published more than 40 articles, has more than 35 invited presentations, and serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. She holds several patents for pharmaceutical technologies enabling drug delivery of small molecules and biologics.A key volunteer in American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS). She is the President for the association and responsible for leading implementation of  the 2021-2025 strategic plan and ensuring that the AAPS communities are thriving. Annette was the 2020 co-recipient of the AAPS Alice E Till Women in Pharmaceutical Science Recognition, honoring women who has made significant contributions to the to the mentorship, advancement, and support of women in the pharmaceutical sciences

Shawn Davis, PhD, is an Executive Director at AstraZeneca and leads the Drug Delivery team of the Biopharmaceuticals Development organization. The team improves patients’ lives by ensuring AZ’s therapies are as safe, effective, and convenient as possible using technologies that target the delivery of medicines to the site of action and optimizing their effective half-life. This requires the evaluation, development, and commercialization of drug delivery technologies across a wide range of modalities in the biopharmaceutical space. Areas of program delivery include: intracellular delivery of nucleic acids, controlled release of antibodies for less frequent dosing, novel routes of administration for therapeutic benefit, and co-delivery of multiple therapeutic molecules. Dr Davis also serves as the CMC leader for early stage assets in the portfolio for antibody, peptide, and RNA modalities.Over the past two decades, Dr Davis has been recognized as a thoughtful, decisive leader with a record of technical and organizational success delivering results for patients and shareholders. Throughout his career he has worked for companies ranging from early stage startups to the world’s largest Biopharmaceutical manufacturers. He has an ability to translate ambiguity and complexity into actionable next steps while balancing scientific, commercial, and clinical requirements. He has wealth of experience bridging the gap between current and future state of medicine while empowering high performance teams to deliver on the program’s vision and is a recognized expert in the field of drug delivery. 

Nick Warne is currently Vice President of Pharmaceutical Research and Development at Pfizer.  Dr Warne has 32 years of industrial experience focusing on biologics formulation development, dosage form design and manufacturing process development. He and his team have been fortunate to have contributed to the licensure of 18 biologics including clotting factors, growth proteins, mabs, vaccines and ADCs. Dr Warne holds numerous protein formulation patents and, with his group, has made over 100 presentations at national meetings and in journals. Prior to his position at Pfizer, Dr Warne had positions of increasing responsibility at Wyeth and Genetics Institute, and has been based in Andover, Massachusetts. Dr Warne received his PhD in Chemistry from Purdue University under the guidance of Professor Michael Laskowski Jr. He received his BS in Biochemistry, with Distinction in Research, from the University of Rochester.