What CMOs Must Know About How Patient Engagement Supports the Entire Biotech

Rolf Benirschke’s third season as a placekicker in the NFL was cut short when, after battling Crohn’s Disease for almost two years, he had to undergo two emergency surgeries six days apart. He would remain in intensive care for almost six weeks battling for his life, and then make a miraculous comeback and return to play the next season. Mr Benirschke would play seven more seasons with the San Diego Chargers, becoming the first player ever to wear an ostomy bag in the NFL, while earning numerous honors including being named the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year, NFL Comeback Player of the Year, playing in the Pro Bowl and becoming the 20th player inducted into the Chargers Hall of Fame.Following his NFL career, Mr Benirschke founded Legacy Health Strategies, to partner with medical device and pharmaceutical companies to help create innovative programs that help support, inspire and provide resources to the patients they serve. Programs have included, Great Comebacks, The Better Way Back, Wake Up to Sleep, Alive & Kicking, The Ostomy Recovery Program and The Grateful Patient Project to name a few. Over time, Legacy has become a strategic consulting company with a customized approach to serving biopharmaceutical and medtech companies as well as global pharmaceutical organizations. Serving as the bridge between what patients want and what companies need, Mr Benirschke and his team partner with organizations to elevate the importance of patient engagement at the highest levels. Often it is the development of a strategic patient roadmap, understanding from patients how best to decrease the burden of clinical trial participation or truly identifying key unmet needs, where the Legacy’s services are best utilized. From there, the team is also actively involved in the implementation of a wide variety of patient engagement activities across the lifecycle of a product that produces measurable results. Mr Benirschke is an inspiring and respected visionary and speaker who is passionate about improving the patient experience and achieving mutually beneficial outcomes for the companies he and his teamwork with and for patients waiting for new medicines and therapies.  Mr Benirschke is also the founder of the Rolf Benirschke Legacy Foundation and the author of three books, including his autobiography, Alive & Kicking. Benirschke and his wife Mary have been married for over 30 years and have four children, three of whom have special needs.

Jodie Gillon is currently the SVP of Corporate Affairs & Patient Advocacy with Peptilogics and serves on their management team. In this role she is building out several key functions for the organization which encompass Patient, Medical and Corporate Affairs. She is responsible for relationships with all external stakeholders and communications while creating platform functions such as Patient Advocacy, Stakeholder Engagement, Medical Education, Grants & Sponsorships, Medical, External & Internal Communications, Congress & Event Management, Compassionate Use and Medical Information. Ms Gillon is the lead for driving Trial Recruitment and Corporate Governance which includes spearheading a Women’s Committee. Most recently Ms Gillon served as the Chief Patient Officer and Head of Corporate and Medical Affairs at Abeona Therapeutics, a cell and gene therapy company.Ms Gillon started her career in Advocacy, Hospitals and Government and transitioned to industry over two decades ago holding various roles across Development, Medical & Corporate Affairs. Prior to joining Abeona, Ms Gillon cumulatively spent over a decade with Pfizer as the Global Medical Lead, Patient Engagement, for the Rare Diseases Business Unit and the Director, Medical Communications, within the Chief Medical Office. She served as a core member on all Medical, Commercial, Launch, Global and Regional Leadership Teams ensuring the patient voice drove strategy and facilitated collaborations with Patient Groups.Prior to Pfizer, Ms Gillon was the Head of Patient Advocacy and Professional Affairs with Achillion Pharmaceuticals where she led Policy, Alliances, Patient Engagement, Contributions/Grants, Compassionate Use, Medical Information, Medical Communications, Field Medical and External Affairs. Previously she served as the Head of the Chief Medical Office of AstraZeneca where she managed Patient Engagement, Compassionate Use, Trial and Payment Transparency, Meetings and Events, an HCP Engagement Center, Company-wide policy, External contributions, Alliances and Crisis management.Ms Gillon held additional roles as the Global Communications lead at Novartis, Director of Medical Education for Oridion Medical and as a Health Economist with the Israeli Center for Disease Control and Ministry of Health. She holds an MPH with a dual degree in Health Economics and Epidemiology from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a BSFS from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. She currently serves on several industry-wide Boards & Committees, has published and spoken externally across a wide variety of topics and mentors students and female professionals across our industry.

As Chief Medical Officer Dr Barry Ticho is responsible for Stoke Therapeutics’s efforts to develop first-in-class RNA based disease-modifying medicines to treat severe genetic diseases. He is also co-founder and former CEO of Verve Therapeutics which is developing therapies to edit the genome and confer protection from cardiovascular disease. Prior to joining Stoke, Dr Ticho was Head of R&D for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases at Moderna Therapeutics. He was previously Head of External R&D Innovation for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases at Pfizer. Prior to that he was Vice President of Clinical Development at Biogen where he led clinical development for the Tysabri program for MS and led the aducanumab program for Alzheimer’s Disease. Barry obtained his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago and completed Pediatrics training at Northwestern University and a Cardiology fellowship at Children’s Hospital in Boston. He was on clinical staff at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. 

Dr Waltzman is a Board-certified Medical Oncologist with over 20 years’ experience supervising the delivery of complex oncology patient care and palliative medicine in teaching hospitals and developing new drugs in oncology and in malaria at large pharma. Dr Waltzman is currently the Chief Medical Officer of Molecular Templates, Inc, a clinical-stage, publicly traded biotechnology company. Previously, Dr Waltzman was the CMO for Rgenix and prior to that the CMO/CSO for Jaguar Health. Dr Waltzman spent over nine years at Novartis, most recently as Global Program Head responsible for development activities of antimalarials, including generating a collaboration agreement with Medicines for Malaria Venture and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Previously, Dr Waltzman was responsible for Global Clinical Development activities for several oncology compounds including the successful NDA filing of Jakavi, renewal for Tasigna and an sNDA for Glivec. For nearly 12 years, Dr Waltzman worked as a clinical medical oncologist and researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Mount Sinai, and Saint Vincents, all in New York. He held academic positions as Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and New York Medical College.Dr Waltzman received his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Brown University with honors in American Literature. He also received his medical degree from Brown University and completed his internship and residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, MA. He completed his fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in hematology and oncology. He graduated with an MBA from Columbia University in New York