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Woman of the Week: Intergalactic Therapeutics’ Dr. Theresa Heah

Welcome to the Woman of the Week podcast, a weekly discussion that illuminates the unique stories of women leaders who are catalyzing change throughout the life sciences industry. You can check out all our podcast episodes here.

Dr. Theresa Heah has spent her entire career moving ophthalmologic science forward. Today, as CEO of the “non-viral gene therapy” company Intergalactic Therapeutics, she’s pursuing a lofty mission to not just “cure blindness” but transform medicine along the way. And Heah is confident that Intergalactic has “cracked the code to advance a potentially safer, more effective, more versatile gene therapy to patients.”

“I truly believe that … we are going to cure blindness, whether in my generation (or) in the next,” Heah said. “Gene therapy is the future of ophthalmology and the future of medicine.”

In March this year, Intergalactic announced its lead program — IG-002 — showed efficacy as a single payload in addressing ABCA4-related retinopathies for the first time.

“Our proprietary integrated platform comprises three core pillars to bring non-local, non-viral gene therapy into reality and transform treatment paradigms,” Heah said. “We use a versatile programmable non-viral gene therapy technology called C3DNA, which stands for covalently closed and circular DNA. And we use a precise tunable system for local delivery called COMET to electro-transfer delivery to enable these non-viral DNA applications. We recently demonstrated an in vivo proof-of-concept (study) in pigs, a 12-month durable, persistent expression of human ABCA4 with our C3DNA technology.”

Competitive by nature, Heah remarked that upon taking the top role at Intergalactic Therapeutics in January 2023, people said the “world is not enough” for her and that of course she had to “go intergalactic.”

“Joking aside, (Intergalactic) is the brainchild of our venture capital firm, Apple Tree Partners, and my founding CEO, Mike Ellis, who is a fantastic scientist. He built this company to make non-viral gene therapy a reality,” she said.

After experiencing the death of her father at the age of 5, Heah knew she was destined to pursue a career in medicine.

“I come from a very humble family, humble beginnings in Malaysia,” she said. “My father had an unexpected myocardial infarction in his late 40s. At that time in Malaysia, the medical innovation, the science wasn’t there. (But) if the innovation and science was there, perhaps my father could have been treated. I used to tell my friends, my teachers that I will become a doctor one day. And some people said, ‘That’s great, that’s really a great ambition.’ And some people would say, ‘Wow, that’s really far-fetched.’ I think that really spurred me on because I’ve always been laser-focused on where I want to be and how I was going to get there.”

Over the course of her career, she has amassed considerable drug development and commercial experience, leading projects from discovery to launch, in start-up, small, medium and big pharma companies. Part of her success, she said, is her ability to communicate.

“When I was launching Eylea, which is an anti-VEGF or anti-angiogenic drug in neovascular AMD, DME, etc., it was important to tell the story, it was important to really understand different audiences, different stakeholders,” she said. “(I learned) how to communicate effectively with patients, with key thought leaders, with peers, with investors — how to make it easy so that they understand.”

As she settles into her new role, Heah details in this WoW episode what’s next for the three-year old company, why it’s important to push boundaries and how she uses “brains, heart and soul” builds high-performing teams.

Welcome to WoW, the Woman of the Week podcast by PharmaVoice, powered by Industry Dive.

In this episode, Taren Grom, editor-in-chief emeritus at PharmaVoice meets with Dr. Theresa Heah, CEO, Intergalactic Therapeutics.

Taren: Dr. Heah, welcome to the WoW podcast program.

Theresa: Really honored to be here today.

Taren: You joined Intergalactic Therapeutics just three months ago as CEO. What have these first couple of months been like for you?

Theresa: It has been amazing to be honored here as the CEO of Intergalactic Therapeutics. It’s just been amazing to see the science, the people, and to really shape the business.

Taren: So, what was your first order of business when you walked in the door?

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