Day in the Life of Dr Toinét Cronjé, Director of Translational Sciences at Sequoia Genetics
Founded just last year, Sequoia Genetics is set to play a defining role in achieving an ambition that has long challenged the global pharmaceutical industry: getting the right drugs to the right patients more quickly – and more cost-effectively. From its base in White City Innovation District’s I-HUB, the team is working with academia, investors, pharma and biotech to generate valuable new genetic insights to guide drug discovery and clinical development decisions. The goal? To dramatically improve the efficiency of the drug development process by informing on potential efficacy and safety before costly clinical trials even begin.
Seqouia Genetics’ consultancy team spans biologists, clinicians, epidemiologists, statisticians, data scientists, bioinformaticians and industry experts who are all collaborating to leverage human genetic data using a technique called “Mendelian randomization”. By harnessing this genetic data to infer the causal effects of drug target perturbation in humans – including on-target efficacy, safety, repurposing, biomarker selection, effect heterogeneity, and interactions –the efficiency of drug development can be substantially improved.
While less than 10% of drugs entering clinical studies are ever approved for use in patients, drug targets with human genetic evidence have been shown to be more than twice as likely to make it through clinical development. With the average new drug today requiring more than 10 years and 1 billion US dollars to obtain regulatory approval, access to these new insights holds the promise of a transformative impact on our ability to develop efficacious and safe therapies to prevent and treat disease.
We caught up with Dr Toinét Cronjé, Director of Translational Sciences at Sequoia Genetics, to get a window on her typical day at work and her perspective on life at a fast-growth start-up in White City Innovation District.
1. What is a typical day like for you?
It’s pretty dynamic! When I arrive in the office, I’m typically working across three domains. The first is client engagement – understanding client needs and having meetings to work through proposals and portfolios. The second aspect is cross-collaboration and optimising team efforts, which means checking on the translation team and getting involved in projects wherever they might need help, all the way from proposal to analyses. Finally, there’s the very important task of keeping up with the latest scientific advances which, for me, involves attending meetings or conferences, reading papers, furthering academic collaborations, and engaging with thought leaders across the relevant fields.
2. What do you love about working in WCID – in three words?
Creativity, innovation and excellence.
3. Why did you choose to be located here?
When we were looking at potential laboratory and office locations for our company base, we were very drawn to the vision of White City Innovation District as the epicentre of academic innovation in Europe and possibly the world. Practically, it’s a really good location in terms of accessibility and proximity to world-class academic institutions and industry partners. The District offers all of the key facilities we were looking for – including office space and IT infrastructure – but also great places to host meetings, conferences and celebrate special occasions. We can do that in this campus. We also enjoy incorporating yoga, netball and football as part of our team activities. It’s just great to be surrounded by creativity, innovation and excellence – being here as it’s all happening.
4. What does ‘innovation’ mean to you and how does your company contribute to it?
Innovation to me is making genuine scientific advances and translating them to have a meaningful impact on people’s lives. For our team at Sequoia Genetics, it’s about improving the efficiency of drug development. This involves taking scientific principles and working hand in hand with the people who invest in these companies, plus the developers themselves, to optimise their efforts and positively change the trajectory of development.
5. What are you most proud of in your current role?
I’m very proud of our overall approach – we have a good relationship with our clients, and we ensure that all of our insights are fully reproduceable and able to be shared in a way that empowers them in the process. We are always learning from each other, and the impact is often far broader than the specific project. It’s really fulfilling to be moving the academic field in a positive direction and working with powerful companies to change the way that we look at creating and delivering solutions to key health issues.
6. What is the hot topic in your business?
At the moment it’s undoubtedly obesity. The field has now taken what used to be a stigmatised social condition and getting it into a place where we can therapeutically intervene and really improve people’s lives and health outcomes. In many ways, the recent exciting advances in obesity treatment have shattered the glass ceiling and radically changed the way people in this industry think about health and disease, with cardiovascular, kidney, liver and longevity outcomes now being brought into more holistic clinical trials around obesity.
7. What’s the best business advice you have for people looking to break into your specialism?
I think the key advice I would give is to embrace collaboration. A multi-disciplinary mindset is so important, since it’s rarely purely a biology question or a data question – you often need to involve your clinicians and statisticians, and you really need to understand how biotech and pharma works. Industries today are increasingly convergent, so my advice is to avoid silos.
8. What would Plan B have been on the career front?
Probably academia! I love research – putting the puzzle pieces together and answering questions. It’s hard to imagine going back but that was plan until this fantastic opportunity with Dipender [Dr Dipender Gill, Sequoia Genetics Co-Founder] came along…
Whether you are a biologist, practicing clinician, academic, data scientist, or industry professional interested in leveraging genetic data for drug discovery and development, Seqouia Genetics is always interested in hearing from people keen to join their growing team. To explore career opportunities, get in touch with the team: Jobs | Sequoia Genetics
