Dr Kristen Hege Looks Back at Lessons Learned from a Career in CAR-T Therapy

Kristen Hege, MD, is currently an Independent Board Member at Adaptimmune, Mersana & Graphite Bio. Her most recent role was SVP, Early Clinical Development, Hematology/Oncology & Cell Therapy following the acquisition of Celgene in 2019. Previously, she spent 10 years at Celgene building the Early Clinical Development organization where her team advanced a pipeline of small molecules, biologics and T cell therapies. She has led the bluebird- partnered BCMA CART cell program (ide-cel; formerly bb2121) in multiple myeloma from first in man through registrational studies. Prior to joining Celgene she held multiple executive roles at biotech companies, including Cell Genesys, Cellerant and Theraclone. In addition to her work at BMS, Dr Hege is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) where she continues to see patients with blood cancers weekly. Dr Hege also serves on the Board of Directors of Mersana Therapeutics and was elected to the Board of Directors for the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) for a 3-year term from 2016-2019. Dr Hege received her MD from UCSF and internal medicine and hematology/oncology subspecialty training at Harvard and UCSF, respectively. In 2015, Dr Hege was recognized by Fierce Biotech as one of the top 12 women in Biopharma and in 2019 she was the first Celgene recipient of the Healthcare Business Women’s Association Luminary award. Her career path and long history with CAR T cell development was featured in the “Turning Points” series as one of 25 physicians and scientists recognized as part of the 25th anniversary celebration of Nature Medicine.