Meet the team
Vicore is an agile organization with a highly experienced team throughout the entire value chain. Meet some of our colleagues here.
Cecilia Ganslandt
Global Medical Director
What is your background
I am trained as an MD and specialized in drug development through a post-graduate MSc in pharmaceutical medicine. I have 25+ years of experience from the pharma industry in various roles spanning from clinical and nonclinical development, drug safety and medical affairs, within small and mid-size companies.
What do you do in your daily work at Vicore?
As the Global Medical Director, I am medically responsible for the appointed clinical development programs and clinical studies. This involves contributing to design to secure that programs are scientifically sound and keeping medical and safety oversight during the studies to ensure subject safety and a favorable benefit:risk balance.
What is the most challenging part and what is the most rewarding part of your role?
The most challenging part is to balance the need for studies to be patient-friendly and not putting an unnecessary burden on patients and site staff, while ensuring comprehensive data collection to support a future regulatory submission. The most rewarding part of my role is receiving feedback when connecting with clinicians and patients that our studies address a significant medical need for patients suffering from severe disease.
What background and qualities are needed to work as a GMD?
To work as a GMD, you need a medical qualification to understand the potential effects of our products on the body and identifying and managing possible side effects as soon as they appear. As a person, you need a scientific, curious mindset, the ability to communicate complex information clearly, and you should be able to see the big picture while keeping attention to detail.
What other functions do you work closely with and what are some of the key success factors for this collaboration?
Everything we do in the company is targeted to address patients’ medical needs so one huge benefit of my role is that I get to work closely with almost all other functions in the company. In particular, I can mention the Clinical Operations team who manages our clinical studies from planning through conduct to reporting, where we work very closely together on a daily basis. Key success factors for the collaborations are to have a common goal which we all work towards, respecting each other’s professionality but always being willing to support where needed, and frequent and transparent communication in the team.
How do you provide medical expertise within multiple indications without being a trained specialist physician?
As pharmaceutical physicians we need to be experts on our own products and data, but we need to build close relationships with clinical experts within each indication to help us understand how to optimally design programs that address the relevant medical needs for their patients.