Sonal Patel

VP of Oncology Scientific Innovation at Johnson and Johnson Innovation

Speaker

Sonal is VP of Oncology Scientific innovation at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, London. In this role Sonal uses her drug discovery and scientific experience to identify and lead external opportunities in the Oncology therapeutic area.

Before joining the Johnson and Johnson family, Sonal was Senior Director of External Innovation at the Roche Innovation in Basel, Switzerland. She also was Head of Disease Biology in the Bioelectronic Medicines R&D unit of Glaxo SmithKline in Stevenage, UK and worked in the GSK centre of Excellence for externalised drug discovery. In both roles Sonal Led scientific diligence of new opportunities across therapeutic modalities including devices and led partnerships to develop a portfolio of external collaborations for pharma.

Sonal has had an extensive 17-year prior career in biotech in the UK as Head of Molecular Pharmacology at Prosidion-OSI, working on diabetes and obesity drug targets, Oncology leader for a start-up, Piramed Ltd on small molecule discovery for PI3K family and at Oxford Glycosciences, a proteomics platform company, leading target Identification and validation for oncology discovery projects. All three were acquired by pharma partners.

Sonal completed postdoctoral training at the Lombardi Cancer Centre, Dept. of Radiation Medicine at Georgetown University working on the downstream mediators of raf-1 kinase signaling in cancer. She received her PhD from the University of Bradford, Institute of Cancer Therapeutics on the Immuo-modulatory mechanism of the anticancer agent 5,6-DMXAA and it analogues.

Education:

• PhD from the University of Bradford, Institute of Cancer Therapeutics
• Postdoctoral training at the Lombardi Cancer Centre, Dept. of Radiation Medicine at Georgetown University
• BSc Pharmacology and Biochemistry from Uni of Leeds