GA’s Brett Zbar and Immunocore’s Bahija Jallal
General Atlantic Managing Director and Global Head of Life Sciences Brett Zbar speaks with Immunocore CEO Bahija Jallal about her passion for science, the importance of strong leadership as a female CEO and the ways in which diversity in STEM can help unlock the innovation needed to develop transformative medicines that address unmet needs.
In This Episode
General Atlantic Managing Director and Global Head of Life Sciences sits down with Bahija Jallal, CEO of Immunocore, a leading biotechnology company aiming to develop a new generation of transformative medicines. They discuss the personal experiences that led Bahija to devote her career to science; the enduring source of inspiration that her mother provides; the power of research and its ability to change lives; the critical importance of diversity in STEM and how Bahjia’s role has allowed her to pave a path for other women in the industry; her view that innovation is rooted in diversity of thought and why diverse leadership is an essential ingredient of commercial successful; the challenges associated with ‘pipeline leakage,’ revealing how diverse talent can get lost in an organization; Immunocore’s groundbreaking development of a novel class of T-cell receptor immunotherapies and the company’s milestone FDA approval of Kimmitrak, the first and only FDA-approved therapy to treat an aggressive form of eye cancer; the difficult yet necessary decisions Bahija had to make when she began her role as CEO just before the pandemic hit; Immunocore’s TCR technology and how it is being explored as an approach to other chronic viral infections; the U.S. government’s active role in funding research; how the pursuit of treatments to chronic viral infections is attractive to scientists throughout the world, including those who come to the U.S. to work on potentially transformative projects; the ways in which COVID-19 posed unique challenges to leadership; and other topics.
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