1. Could you tell us a bit about your background?
I was born in Western Norway, and I am a trained Paediatrician. I mainly focused on neonatal care and paediatric cardiology during my time in the clinic, treating the most severely ill patients. I’ve since spent the last 12 years doing a variety of different medical roles in multinational pharma companies and, in recent years, medtech and life sciences start-ups. In pharma, I started out in an expert role as a medical advisor before moving into managerial roles both at country and Nordic level, as well as serving as Country Medical Director for Norway. Through my previous roles I have gained extensive experience working in international environments and have been responsible for strategy and budgets in medical affairs, pharmacovigilance and regulatory as well as clinical operations.
2. What attracted you to Oasmia?
I like the fact that Oasmia is a company that focuses on developing treatments for the unmet needs of patients with cancer. Oasmia is entrepreneurial but with big ambitions, with everyone working to achieve the common goal of building a sustainable oncology company. We are a great team and everyone in the head office and in the senior team are focused on building up experienced teams with key competencies required for the development of cancer drugs. What is important to me is that all of my colleagues are aligned and focused on delivering our strategy; we all have the same goal, and we work as a team to ensure these goals are met.
3. What does your role at Oasmia entail?
In my role I am the head of regulatory affairs, pharmacovigilance, medical affairs and clinical development. In short this means that I am accountable for the development programme of new compounds and platforms and bringing them through the regulatory process to market. It is a strategic role working in close collaboration with my colleagues in the management team so, most importantly, my role involves teamwork. In a company such as Oasmia you have to be flexible in your day-to-day work as there is a lot of overlap between functions. You have to look for solutions that work for everyone and help each other out, to benefit the common goals of patients and the company. This means that you need to improvise, adapt quickly to solve issues that are not always easy to foresee, but that is the beauty of such a role and in addition you get to work with a variety of people in different roles and functions that each bring a unique aspect to the team.
4. What makes Oasmia different to other companies in the sector?
I cannot speak for other companies, but at Oasmia we have a quite lean organization but with a highly capable team. This ensures that we are able to smoothly collaborate to make things happen fast and move forward. At Oasmia, our roles are not as fixed as in pharma companies – you adapt to get the job done which means we are all constantly developing. Oasmia’s long-term goal is to provide treatments for patients with hard-to-treat and late-stage cancers with currently limited options, and the team at Oasmia are all committed to and focused on delivering this.
5. What is your vision (from a medical perspective) for Oasmia as the company grows?
My vision is that Oasmia continues on our track to bring new medicines and innovative solutions to market that help oncology patients in need. I believe Oasmia will be successful by working in partnership with patient organisations, health care providers and the wider sector to accelerate patient access to life-changing medicines. We have started to build out our oncology pipeline with the in-licensing of Cantrixil, and we hope to continue to build this with our string of pearls strategy.
6. How has COVID-19 changed the way that Oasmia operates?
COVID-19 has actually allowed us to have more flexibility by embracing digital meetings and speeding up operations through digitalization. Whilst we are missing the face-to-face opportunities and meeting our partners in-person, Oasmia has continued its excellent work throughout the pandemic and will continue to do so. It is great to see the world opening up and we look forward to collaborating in-person once again.