Integrating Adaptive Approaches to Align Clinical Development with Investment Priorities

Ari Brettman is a Senior Managing Director in the Blackstone Life Sciences group, having joined Blackstone as part of its acquisition of Clarus in December of 2018. Dr Brettman joined Clarus in September 2014.Dr Brettman is focused on investments across the firm's portfolio, including company creation, spinouts, royalty monetizations, R&D risk-sharing collaborations, and structured credit with biopharmaceutical and med tech companies. Dr Brettman has played leading roles in Blackstone Life Science’s investments in Anthos Therapeutics, where he is a founding member of the Board of Directors and initially served as Acting Chief Medical Officer, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, AvenCell, where he is a founding member of the Board of Directors, and Pfizer. At Clarus, he played leading roles and served on the Board of Directors in portfolio companies Praxis Precision Medicines and Essa Pharmaceuticals.Prior to Clarus, Dr Brettman completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr Brettman was also an NIH-sponsored post-doctoral fellow at the MGH Center for Systems Biology, where he studied the autophagy of lipid droplets and used electronic medical record-based big data analytics at Partners Healthcare to conduct clinical research and improve disease management.Dr Brettman received his MD from Duke University and his AB in History and Science from Harvard College. While a medical student, he was a Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation Fellow at Stanford University, where he studied angiogenesis.

Natalia "Natasha" Muehlemann, MD, MBA has over 20 years of experience in General Management, Clinical Development, Business Development & Licensing in Life Sciences across several therapeutic areas. In her position of VP, Strategic Consulting at Cytel, Natalia focuses on the on the integration of innovative adaptive frequentists and Bayesian designs, Machine Learning methods and RWE into comprehensive clinical development strategies. Prior to Cytel, Natalia was global Category Head, Acute Care – Oncology – Devices at Nestle Health Sciences. Natalia has been acting as Expert Jury member for European Commission's Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency and other Investors forums. Natalia holds an MD and MBA from IMD, and professional certifications in statistics, data science and AI/ML from Stanford, IBM and MIT.