Science Alliance
eBriefing 
Pursuing a Career in Clinical Research and Management
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Posted September 08, 2021
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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a lot of attention to clinical trials and management. While the recent media coverage has shed more light about the process, the past few decades has seen tremendous increase in medical technology and information. This has resulted in a surge of potential new drugs, devices and biologics that must be tested before being released for public use. On February 17, 2021, the New York Academy of Sciences hosted Career Paths in Clinical Research and Management to examine the life of a pharmaceutical drug when it leaves the research laboratory.
Speakers Dana Cullen, PhD and Eric Gold, PhD shared their career paths after graduate study and detailed how their graduate school experiences, including networking, helped them transition to clinical research. They also discussed regulations, clinical trial design, and the importance of in-depth understanding of disease and drug mechanism.
In this eBriefing, You’ll Learn
- How to translate your skills to navigate the clinical research field
- How to communicate research across various stages from drug design to patients
- Why the diversity of the volunteer pool is important when assessing clinical data
- What regulations need to be followed to satisfy research ethics
Speakers
Dana Cullen, PhD
Bristol-Meyers Squibb
Eric Gold, PhD
Edwards Lifesciences
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Career Paths in Clinical Research and Management
Speakers
Dana Cullen, PhD
Dana Cullen is a Clinical Trial Lead in Late Oncology Clinical Development at Bristol Myers Squibb. In this role, Dana is responsible for leading clinical trials in gastrointestinal cancers, focused on better understanding the biology of these diseases and helping to find new medicines for these difficult to treat tumor types. Recently the CheckMate649 study announced positive results, paving the way for a potential new treatment option in first line gastric cancer.
In her previous role as Research Liaison with the International Immuno-Oncology Network (II-ON) at BMS, Dana was responsible for engaging with top academic institutions, working together to generate innovative I-O science, launch biology-driven trials, and seek out cutting-edge technologies with the goal of translating research findings into clinical trials and, ultimately, clinical practice.
Prior to joining BMS, Dana was a post-doc serving as biomarker lead for both early and late development programs in the Hematology/Oncology Translational Research group at Janssen R&D. Dana received her B.S. degree in Biological Sciences, from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. She earned her Ph.D. degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, focused on the epigenetic regulation of cancer development.
Eric Gold, PhD
Eric Gold is a Clinical Trial Project Manager for transcatheter heart valve devices at Edwards Lifesciences. He has a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California, Irvine, where he studied rodent models of traumatic brain injury and the endogenous stem cell response to injury. During graduate school, he completed an R&D internship at Genentech investigating novel therapeutic targets for Parkinson’s disease. After completing his PhD, he joined Edwards Lifesciences as part of the inaugural class of a Clinical and Regulatory rotational development program.