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Heather McKenzie

Heather McKenzie

Senior Editor

Heather McKenzie is a professional journalist with more than five years experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Since joining BioSpace, she has written more than 200 features and breaking news articles with a particular focus in neuroscience and gene therapy. She has also traveled internationally to cover global biotech hubs such as Israel. In previous roles, she has covered current affairs, sports, education and politics. She previously spent eight years as a senior content producer for executive-level business conferences in the pharma/biotech, legal, energy and business strategy sectors. In her free time, Heather enjoys creative writing, spending time with family and playing with her energetic Russian Blue cat Roofus. She hails from Toronto and has also lived in Chicago and Chesapeake, Virginia. You can reach her at heather.mckenzie@biospace.com.

Drug Development
ALS Patients Fight for the Right to Try and Patient-Centric Trial Design
Lisa Stockman Mauriello was diagnosed with ALS in January and is seeking access to Biogen’s tofersen (BIIB067) through the Right to Try Act. Her case has reinvigorated the ALS community and its fight for expanded access to investigational therapies for this cruel, always fatal disease.
March 30, 2021
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7 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Business
Swift Fall From Grace Continues for Former COVID-19 Vaccine Czar Slaoui
In a stunning fall from grace playing out this week, former Operation Warp Speed vaccine czar, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, issued a statement Thursday morning, as news emerged that he has resigned from additional biotech posts.
March 25, 2021
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2 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Biotech Beach
Achieving Gender Equality in The Life Sciences Industry Will Take a ‘Village’
Per BioSpace’s 2020 U.S. Life Sciences Salary Report and 2020 U.S. Life Sciences Diversity & Inclusion Report, men out-earn women by 19.3%, which climbs to 47.6% when looking specifically at health care. Also, only 14% of women felt that opportunities for promotion were fair compared to 23% of their male counterparts.
March 22, 2021
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6 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Drug Development
ICYMI: A Closer Look at News You Might Have Missed This Week
The results published in the NEJM state that pegcetacoplan met the study’s primary endpoint for efficacy, demonstrating an advantage over eculizumab with a statistically significant improvement in adjusted means of 3.8 g/dL of hemoglobin at week 16 (p<0.001). An impressive 85% of patients were transfusion free at 16 weeks, in contrast to only 15% of eculizumab-treated patients.
March 18, 2021
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7 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Business
AMR Fund and Global Cohorts Working to Prevent Another Pandemic
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 35,000 Americans perish each year from antibiotic-resistant infections, and estimates have AMR claiming the lives of as many as 10 million globally by 2050.
March 11, 2021
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7 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Business
Takeda Inks Deal to Go After Solid Tumors with Maverick T-Cell Engager Technology
The pair’s lead candidate, TAK-186 (formerly MVC-101), a first-in-class conditionally active T-cell engager, has recently entered the clinic in a Phase I/II study for the treatment of EGFR-expressing solid tumors such as those found in head and neck cancers.
March 9, 2021
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3 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Business
Promoting Diversity & Inclusion Through an Ethos of Cultural and Emotional Intelligence
Despite a historic push for greater diversity and inclusion (D&I), a significant disconnect prevails between good intentions and actual lived experiences.
March 9, 2021
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6 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Business
Are Bionauts™ a Vessel to the Final Frontier of CNS Diseases?
Bionauts™, a novel treatment modality that uses remote-controlled microscale robots to deliver biologics, nucleic acids, or small molecule therapies to precise areas of the brain, has the potential to go where no therapy has gone before, opening up new pathways in the fight against devastating CNS disorders like gliomas and Huntington’s disease.
March 3, 2021
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3 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Drs. Neely Mozaffarian and Hong Sun, Janssen Immun
Drug Development
Pivots During Pandemic Bring Patient-Centric Options to Rare Disease Patients
To facilitate its goal of building an industry-leading gene therapy company focused on rare CNS diseases, Sio has made it a priority to interact with patient organizations to determine their primary objective, whether that be stability or a cure.
February 28, 2021
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7 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Orna Chief Executive Officer, Thomas Barnes.
Business
Orna Therapeutics Circles Success With $100 Million Launch
Orna, which began as an academic query at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is a biotechnology company creating fully engineered circular RNA, or O-shaped RNA therapies for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune, and genetic disorders.
February 24, 2021
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3 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Business
AMR Action Fund Taps Henry Skinner to Lead, Secures New Investment Dollars
The AMR Action Fund is ramping up its infrastructure – announcing yesterday that former Novartis Venture Funds Head, Henry Skinner, will take the helm as the organization’s first chief executive officer.
February 19, 2021
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3 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Drug Development
Dermavant’s Tapinarof Shows Remittive Potential in Phase III Plaque Psoriasis Trial
Tapinarof’s potential remittive effects could hold even more value for long-term psoriasis suffers. For patients coming into the trial with a PGA score of 0 (n=78), median time to the disease worsening (defined as a PGA score of ≥2) after discontinuing treatment was approximately 115 days, or 4 months.
February 18, 2021
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2 min read
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Heather McKenzie
BioCapital
Prostate Cancer Foundation Funds Disruptive Biomarkers and A Potential Mechanized “Dog’s Nose”
The Prostate Cancer Foundation has been an early accelerator of research that is now coming to fruition, including the early research into PSMA and the discovery that two FDA-approved PARP inhibitors, olaparib (Lynparza) and rucaparib (Rubraca) could work against mutant genes in prostate cancer.
February 17, 2021
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7 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Policy
WHO Approves AstraZeneca-Oxford Vaccine for Emergency Use, Paving Way for Global Access
The WHO’s Emergency Use Listing (EUL), a prerequisite for COVAX Facility vaccine supply, evaluates the safety, quality, and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. As such, today’s approval allows the vaccine to be used by agencies and NGOs around the world.
February 15, 2021
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2 min read
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Heather McKenzie
Drug Development
Intranasal Approaches Have Potential As Vaccines & Therapies for COVID-19
With billions invested in R&D over the past year to find vaccines and therapies for the novel coronavirus, a few select life sciences companies and academic institutions are working on the hypothesis that intranasal vaccines and therapies could be key to stopping COVID-19 in its tracks, and provide greater protection against transmission of COVID-19.
February 12, 2021
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9 min read
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Heather McKenzie
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