Anna Sundgren

I am the Global Development Leader for one of AstraZeneca’s medicines in the renal and heart failure disease areas, so I have global responsibility for the late-stage development of the brand. That includes life-cycle studies and all the brand expansion work we do to support it.
 

The people I work with, motivate me every day; it’s all about trust and respect. Ultimately, the patients are at the heart of what we do. When you’re a physician, you can help one patient at a time. In comparison, when you are in the pharmaceutical industry, you have the ability to help millions of patients with the right drug. So I believe, in our roles, that we are working for the many.

I have been involved in research and pharmaceutical development for more than 20 years, since being awarded a PhD in neurochemistry and neurotoxicology from Stockholm University, Sweden, in 1998. After spending time as a research fellow and as a preclinical scientist at Northwestern University medical school in Chicago, Illinois, I got the chance to join AstraZeneca in 2001, when the company opened a new laboratory in Sweden. I was drawn to the company because of its science-oriented focus and the opportunities this presented.

My early roles as a Senior Research Scientist, Discovery Project Leader and Global Project Manager included defining the right targets to pursue in order to discover the drugs we would progress into medicines, and leading project teams – strategically and operationally – within the neuropathic and nociceptive pain and the neuroscience therapy areas.

In 2011, I moved to London and was appointed Global Medical Affairs Leader, working across several disease areas on emerging products and established brands, including inflammation, metabolic disease, pain and cognitive disorders. I then became Group Clinical Director within Global Medicines Development at Gothenburg, leading a team of scientists and physicians in the area of cardiovascular, renal and metabolism.
 

After being promoted to Therapy Area Clinical Director Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism in 2016, I relocated to Gaithersburg, where my role encompassed project work in renal strategy and tactics and supporting renal medicines under investigation to address chronic kidney disease and its complications.

Being part of the launch team on a new brand, as I am now, is very exciting. It’s very interesting and extremely rewarding. I am very proud of my track record as a project leader, and the work I do to progress our products. Delivering a product is at the core of what we do, and without healthy product delivery we wouldn’t be helping anybody.

My next target – a long-term goal of mine – is to become Global Medicines Leader.