National physician leader and former FDA Deputy Commissioner to drive Aster Insights' growth strategy
TAMPA, Fla., May 15, 2023 - Aster Insights ("the Company"), a bioinformatics company with the most advanced clinicogenomics data services to accelerate oncology discovery, today announced the appointment of Dr. Anand Shah as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. He succeeds Jim Gabriele, who has stepped down from his position. Mr. Gabriele and Dr. Shah have collaborated closely on a number of strategic, operational, and business development initiatives over the past six months and will continue to work together to ensure a smooth transition.
As CEO, Dr. Shah will lead the Company's continued growth with a focus on advancing Aster Insights' national academic research collaborations, developing novel discovery products and services, and strengthening its position as the partner of choice for the life sciences industry. A renowned health policy leader at the nexus of life sciences and health care delivery and services, Dr. Shah also serves as an Operating Advisor at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. He will continue to serve on the Company's Board of Directors.
"Anand is uniquely qualified to lead Aster Insights through this next chapter that will focus on deepening the Company's partnerships with research institutions and the biopharma community," said Sandi Peterson, Chairman of the Board. "He brings decades of experience in serving patients and working within the scientific, regulatory, commercial, and payer communities to advance new medical innovations with the aim of accelerating safe and effective cures for patients. His clinical and public policy expertise will be vital to supporting the Company's mission to patients and academic and life sciences partners."
Peterson continued, "On behalf of the entire Board, I would like to thank Jim Gabriele for his leadership over the past two years. Jim was instrumental in advancing the Company's vision and transforming Aster Insights into an exceptional oncology digital product company in support of patients, researchers, and pharmaceutical partners. Aster Insights is well positioned to build on its next generation of research and commercial collaborations. We wish Jim the best of luck in his future endeavors."
"Over the past two years on the Board, I have worked closely with the world-class team at Aster Insights as the Company has secured its position as a leader in real world oncology data informatics and discovery. I am excited to lead Aster Insights at such an important inflection point in the race to develop the next generation of cancer treatments and improve patient care," said Dr. Shah.
A national physician leader and health policy expert, Dr. Shah has extensive healthcare experience in the senior-most levels of the U.S. government, industry, academia, and as an oncologist. He was formerly the Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dr. Shah was responsible for developing and leading high-priority FDA policy initiatives and oversaw cross-agency efforts in support of FDA's public health mission, including Advanced Manufacturing, the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program, digital health, consumer protection, and decentralized clinical trials. During the Covid public health emergency, he led FDA's pandemic preparedness and recovery efforts. Dr. Shah represented the FDA with top-level policy makers of the White House and Cabinet, Governors and local governments, and regularly led briefings with Congressional leadership.
He served in two senior leadership roles at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). As Senior Medical Advisor, he was the primary counselor for agency-wide policy related to medical and scientific innovation. Dr. Shah established consensus on several critical initiatives including expanding patients' access to cell and gene therapies and streamlining Medicare access to breakthrough technologies. As the Chief Medical Officer of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), Dr. Shah led the clinical design of novel value-based payment and service delivery models including those for primary and specialty care.
Dr. Shah specializes in the early detection, surveillance, and treatment of prostate cancer, and previously developed and led a survivorship clinic for patients on cancer clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His work has been published in several leading journals, including New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Health Affairs, Cancer, and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. Dr. Shah is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as chief resident during his radiation oncology residency at Columbia University. He concurrently earned his MD from the University of Pennsylvania and an MPH in health care management and policy from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Shah graduated from Duke University with a degree in economics. He also served as a Canada-U.S. Fulbright Scholar.
About Aster Insights
Aster Insights is a leading oncology-focused bioinformatics solutions company advancing precision medicine and transforming cancer care through clinical and molecular data and analytics tools. The company's innovative dataset accelerates the discovery, development, and delivery of personalized therapies. Aster Insights is the only bioinformatics company that has lifetime, patient-consented longitudinal clinical data, coupled with whole exome (WES) and whole transcriptome (WTS) sequencing, for both tumor and germline data. Aster Insight's Oncology Research Information Exchange Network® (ORIEN), an alliance of NCI-Designated cancer centers that gather de-identified and lifetime-consented clinical and genomic patient data for research purposes, enables a collaborative approach to medical product discovery. Learn more at www.AsterInsights.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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