Biogen acquired HI-Bio in 2024, and as HI-Bio became Biogen’s West Coast Hub, Donna became the Head of Biomarker and Bioanalytical Sciences. “Growing up in a small town with limited resources to science, I initially didn’t know much about the biotech or healthcare industry let alone potential career opportunities in this field,” she explained. Now, Donna shares where her curiosity for science began and how it shaped her career.
Where it began.
Donna grew up in a small-town in upstate New York. As a kid, she always had an interest in science, but her school had limited access to advanced science courses. In high school, Donna’s teachers recognized her interest in science was much higher than other students and started to provide individual resources to help enrich her learning experiences. “They let me watch planaria through the microscope during lunch,” Donna recalls, “and pushed me to complete my high school chemistry and physics requirements early so I could take science classes at a local community college during school hours.”
Donna’s educational pursuits didn’t stop there.
After high school, she continued her education at Rochester Institute of Technology and became the first in her family to attend a four-year university. Donna graduated with a bachelor’s degree, extensive teaching assistant experience, and a quest to become a professor. After forming her roots on the East Coast, she dug herself out of the snow and headed to Stanford to pursue her Ph.D. through an interdepartmental program applying cutting-edge research to problems in cellular, molecular, computational, translational, and clinical immunology.
Pairing her expertise in science and teaching.
At Stanford, Donna pursued antibody-driven immune disease research and eventually had the opportunity to collaborate with a Genentech researcher, joining his lab as an industry postdoc. She worked in a new immunology biomarker discovery and human genetics group—and repositioned her initial research through the lens of human genetics and genomics. This opportunity helped her build a bench that landed her a teaching position at U.C. Berkeley Extension and connected her with a clinical development team working on a Phase 2 study in lupus.
From postdoc to Amgen, motherhood and more.
Donna’s teaching experience shaped her career trajectory. Following her postdoc, she joined a newly formed research unit at Amgen that was focused on leveraging next generation sequencing technology. This was the perfect opportunity for her at the time. “I was starting my family and looking for a job that provided the security of a full-time position, while also allowing me to continue teaching as an extracurricular,” Donna explained.
Her growth didn’t stop there. She later transitioned into development as a clinical biomarker lead in immuno-oncology and was excited to work closer to patients. Donna found her professional sweet spot at the interface of science and medicine, translating complex biological hypotheses from research into actionable biomarker plans in clinical trials. She explains, “The patients waiting for these medicines motivate me to not only do the work, but to act with urgency. Many of us in this field have personal connections to the diseases that we study, and it is my hope that I can play a small part in bringing therapies forward that can help improve lives.”
From Amgen to the start-up world.
Over her 11 years at Amgen, Donna was promoted multiple times, ultimately to Head of Oncology Clinical Biomarkers. In January 2022, she took the opportunity to move her career from a large corporation to a start-up still in stealth mode called HI-Bio, which had unique ideas to help patients with antibody-driven immune-mediated diseases. This was a challenge that she was excited for, yet initially nervous to take. Donna credits her HI-Bio experiences with helping her step outside her comfort zone, roll up her sleeves and dig in, and as she says, “build a plane while flying it.”
Becoming Biogen’s West Coast Hub and leading the Biomarker and Bioanalytical Sciences team.
In 2024, Biogen acquired HI-Bio, accelerating the company’s expansion into other areas of immunology, including the addition of a late-stage therapeutic candidate to the pipeline, being investigated in multiple indications. The acquisition aligned with Biogen's mission to pioneer innovative science to potentially deliver new medicines that transform patients’ lives.
As HI-Bio became Biogen’s West Coast Hub, Donna became the Head of Biomarker and Bioanalytical Sciences, whose team helps to uncover clinical data in kidney transplant rejection and other potential indications.
“We’re a team of biology, technology, and data nerds!”
Donna’s team plays a key role as the interface between research, development, and commercialization to identify, develop, and deploy biomarkers that enhance our understanding of disease biology, help accelerate all stages of drug development and enable precision medicine. Her team is responsible for strategic, technical, and operational aspects of biomarker and bioanalytical development in global clinical trials. They also leverage translational model systems and complex biological technologies and datasets to discover novel biomarkers and address hypotheses that emerge during clinical development. Donna explains, “As an immunologist, I am particularly excited about our work in transplant rejection. Our phase 2 study in patients with antibody mediated rejection in kidney transplant uncovered novel biological mechanisms and showed clinical proof of concept in patients with tremendous unmet medical need.”
Donna loves what she does and thinks others would love it at Biogen, too.
Biogen is proud of its industry-leading expertise in biomarker research and is growing its biomarker and translational team and seeks adaptable, solutions-oriented scientists to apply their deep understanding of disease biology and biomarker measurement in the context of highly complex clinical trials. “What I love about this role is the ability to be a part of a therapy’s development from the beginning stages in research, through all phases of clinical development, and ultimately to health authority approvals and into patients’ lives,” Donna explained.
For those interested in this type of work, she explains her team looks for individuals who are collaborative, detail-oriented, and possess the ability to effectively communicate complex scientific data to different, often non-scientific, audiences.