CEOs in the state is Avaxia Therapeutics co-founder Barbara Fox. The two women CEOs can compare notes easily if they choose, as Avaxia is also in Lexington.
Surrounded by boxes in her own Lexington offices, Bruhn told me that the move up the ladder for women cannot be taken for granted. “You have to make it a conscious goal,” and that means instituting programs that will mentor women as they enter the biotech ranks, she says. Bruhn is already doing her part to champion more women in her field—in October she named Elizabeth Trehu as chief medical officer. Trehu was previously vice president of product development and medical affairs at Infinity Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:[[ticker:INFI]]) in Cambridge, MA.
Bruhn has a PhD in chemistry from MIT and spent most of her career at another startup, Transkaryotic Therapies, in Cambridge, MA, until it was acquired by British-based Shire (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SHPG]]) in 2005. She stayed on at Shire, as senior vice president for planning and program management for the Human Genetic Therapies, also based in Lexington, until Promedior called.
She’s excited to be back at a startup, and says she took the job at Promedior because of its focus on rare diseases: “I think rare diseases are just inherently very, very interesting,” she says. “To me, the potential to really move things forward in an area of unmet need, where we can really make a difference, was an opportunity that could not be passed up.”
Promedior’s drugs are based on a naturally occurring protein called pentraxin-2 that works as a switch to halt and possibly reverse the formation of scar tissue. Fibrosis occurs when the body’s normal wound-healing process
