Chris Garabedian On How To Drive Drug Development

By Wayne Koberstein, Executive Editor, Life Science Leader magazine
Follow Me On Twitter @WayneKoberstein

We sat down to speak about his latest venture, Xontogeny, the biopharma startup “accelerator,” but we got to talking about his background as a company executive and drug development leader. Sometimes controversially, often successfully, Chris Garabedian has guided the building of biopharma companies and products for 27 years. Those companies include industry pioneers Gilead, COR, Celgene, and Sarepta, but early on he spent several formative years at a more traditional pharma, Abbott. He was always a business person from the start, and he brought a business and commercial perspective to the job even as his early roles immersed him in the world of cutting-edge biopharma science and R&D. After years of managing multiple company functions and disciplines, he took on CEO responsibility, where he continued to take a strong hand in drug development. We traced the interesting and instructive pathway of Garabedian’s career before returning to a look at his current enterprise.