Indena
Serena Tongiani graduated from University Perugia, Italy, with a diploma in Pharmaceutical Science and a PhD in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Science from University of Urbino, Italy.
From 2002 to 2005 she worked at the University of Kansas as research associate conducting research on new drug delivery technologies. During this time, she synthesized and structurally characterized a new family of cyclodextrin derivatives with superior binding capacity. These derivatives provide a universal tool to formulate insoluble drugs. She holds the worldwide patent for this derivatives that are still representing one of the most potent and innovative tool in various field of research. Several start up and spin off companies have been started based on this technology and she is actively collaborating to augment the business around this polymers in several field spanning form drug development to cosmetic and nutraceutical applications, (only as an example the 2C technology of the Infasil deo products is based on this technology).
In 2005 Dr. Tongiani joint Schering Plough Corporation in the US headquarters and started to work in the oral and solid formulation product development group. There she followed the development of new chemical entities from bench to commercialization scale up with the chance to follow all the regulatory approval stages supervising a cross functional team of scientists and technicians.
In 2008 she took over the responsibility of the anti-inflammatory drug development group in Merck where she was engaged in the setup of the phase III studies for one of Merck major drug candidates. She progressed her carrier adding international experience in various managerial roles with increasing responsibilities that included several strategic business decisions. She has managed multifunctional teams, spanning from R&D, production and BD specialist overlooking sensible budget decisions.
In 2010 she took over the position of Head of Preclinical Development departments in ACRAF, Angelini, located in Santa Palomba, Rome, and shortly after, in May 2011, became R&D Director. In this responsibility she has led the research group, including the in vivo and in vitro pharmacology group and the clinical team, to develop drug products for various therapeutic area supporting the company portfolio. She balanced the Angelini R&D pipeline to include projects in early development in the main company core areas (Pain and Inflammation, Nervous System and Antinfectives, and for all the consumer goods including main global brands such as Amuchina, Infasil and Anjelif and Tantum) as well as projects in the late stage of clinical development to support the life cycle management of the products already included in the company portfolio. She also started a dynamic approach to the Angelini’s R&D pipeline that gained to the group several partnerships with center of excellence around the world and several awards and recognitions as best R&D management.
Furthermore, given the Angelini diversified portfolio she started to develop and manage the regulatory registration not only for pharmaceutical products (OTC, Rx and hospital) but also in the cosmetic, nutraceutical and homecare field. She was among the leadership team involve in the acquisition of Infasil and Thermacare.
In 2015 Serena was appointed Chief Scientific Officer in Angelini with an overall responsibility for the company portfolio development, supervising also the Business Development and Regulatory Affairs activities. She has been involved in the licensing in of innovative anti-infectives and CNS drugs for Angelini global market and in the Marketing Authorization acquisition and EU launch of the CNS drug Lurasidone.
For Lurasidone she also managed the pediatric plan EU approval and implementation.
Serena holds several worldwide patents and is the author of more than 70 publications and several editorials and positioning paper. She is actively organizing and moderating pharmaceutical conferences in her area of expertise and she was among the founders of the Italian Drug Discovery network.
In 2020 Serena started a new position as Chief Scientific Officer in IBNSavio, an Italian SME.
In 2021 Serena accepted the position of Chief Portfolio Officer in Indena leading company dedicated to the identification, development and production of high quality active principles from plants, for pharma and healthfood.
She is still following her passion for innovative delivery systems and their application in several fields including consumer health nutraceutical and cosmeceutical product. Serena seats in the scientific board of the TKS publisher and she served as board member and scientific advisor in the University of Torvergata spin off C4T specialized in innovative drug discovery services. In her current position global management skills are essential to take strategic business and investment decision and in order to benchmark a continuous improvement she recently concluded successfully the INSEAD program in Finance for Executives.
