Congratulations to Iskra Reic, an esteemed member of the ACAP Advisory Council, for being recognized as one of the fiercest women in life sciences. This honor celebrates women who are making significant strides in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and medtech, leading efforts in Big Pharma business development, guiding innovative biotechs, and advancing clinical research for potentially lifesaving technologies and therapeutics. These leaders not only pioneer medical breakthroughs but also champion and mentor other women in a traditionally male-dominated field, embodying fearlessness and a commitment to improving patient care and outcomes.
With more than 20 years and several leadership positions across global markets under her belt, Iskra Reic, DDS, Ph.D., is the force behind AstraZeneca’s vaccines and immune therapies division. Before she dove into the biopharma space, her career was on a much different path, and making the switch represented the type of bold decision that would go on to become a recurring theme throughout her work.
Reic came to AstraZeneca in 2001 after training as a doctor of dental surgery at the Medical University of Zagreb in Croatia. It was Croatia’s postwar period, a time in which the country and its healthcare systems were fractured. Still, with a desire to build on her medical education and see where else it could be applied, she joined the biopharma industry, and “the rest is history,” she said in an interview, adding, “I never looked back.”
While the pivot to pharma was “one of the most difficult decisions” she made early in her career, she said, it served to effectively introduce her to herself as someone able to make those tough decisions despite others’ discouragement.
It was the first of many “turn right instead of left” moves she would go on to make throughout her career.
Not many can say they’ve worked all over the world for one company, but Reic’s experience at AstraZeneca makes her something of a pharma globetrotter. She bounced around from Russia to Eurasia to the Middle East to Africa and several other emerging markets in between, before settling first on the senior executive team of the broader European market and then the global team.
In November 2021, she took on her current role of executive vice president of vaccines and immune therapies. It was quite a busy time for vaccines across the industry; that was the same month that AstraZeneca hit the milestone of having distributed 2 billion doses of its not-for-profit Vaxzevria COVID-19 vaccine to more than 170 countries across every continent in just 11 months, a mission that was estimated to have saved over 6 million lives.
“No matter how good and successful of a pharma you are, you very rarely get to those numbers in such a short period of time,” Reic said.
Two-thirds of overall supply of the vaccine was delivered to low- and middle-income countries, lining up with the drugmaker’s ambition to “really make the vaccine for the world,” she said.
While the vaccine was pulled earlier this year due to low demand, AstraZeneca continues to push forward in COVID with an antibody in late-stage development meant to protect the immunocompromised population from the virus. That group makes up 2% of people globally, Reic said, and is quite underserved due to their spread across different diseases.
The pandemic also sparked in Reic a passion for ensuring the resilience of healthcare systems, which she stokes as a member of the steering committee for the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience.
Elsewhere in her work to address unmet needs in healthcare, Reic led the charge on AstraZeneca’s $800 million Icosavax buyout late last year, expanding the company’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) ambitions beyond its Sanofi-partnered antibody Beyfortus and its Synagis for RSV prevention in pre-term infants. The deal centered on Icosavax’s combination vaccine for RSV and human metapneumovirus (hMPV), which could be the first to address “the most frequent virus that nobody ever heard about,” Reic said, referring to hMPV.
Meanwhile, as Icosavax’s vaccine is still being tested, vaccine experts across the map are turning their eyes to a worrying decline in flu vaccination rates. Over the 2023-24 flu season, vaccination coverage among children stood at its lowest rate since 2011-12. While vaccine hesitancy can stem from many different factors, millions of U.S. children and adults dread their yearly shots due to a simple fear of needles.
AstraZeneca’s FluMist is a favorite among that population due to its administration as a quick nasal spray. Reic highlighted how the company has stepped up its nasal vaccination game to new levels with a recent FDA nod for at-home administration, allowing people to receive the protection of a flu vaccine in a way that “fits their own life” as opposed to carving out time for a doctor’s appointment.
Source: https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/2024s-fiercest-women-life-sciences