Sarah Nia, Pharm.D., Director, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Dr. Nia received her B.Sc. in Molecular Biology from University of Toronto in Canada and her Pharm.D. degree from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences in Boston. Dr. Nia initially started her clinical pharmacy career in 2001 in the area of cardiology medicine at Toronto General Hospital after which she held a position as a Transplant Pharmacotherapy Specialist at the same institution. Dr. Nia had a vital role in educational initiatives, such as in-servicing nursing and medical staff, serving as a preceptor and mentor for both pharmacy students and residents, and providing intensive education to transplant recipients. She also had many other responsibilities including participating in clinical research projects, promoting safe medication practices, and acting as a primary resource for drug information. Dr. Nia still serves as a lecturer for the Pharm.D. program of the Faculty of Pharmacy at University of Toronto, Canada.

Dr. Nia joined Alexion Pharmaceuticals in January 2006. From January 2006 until present she served as a Medical Science Liaison where her primary responsibility was to identify, develop and maintain relationships with national and regional key opinion leaders (KOL) in hematology/oncology therapeutic area. Specific to this workshop she served as a key clinical resource to KOLs to disseminate current medical knowledge and clinical data on the product. Dr. Nia assisted on development and progress of MSL goals to align KOL advocacy during product launch to include KOL relationship speaker training and increase utilization of KOL relationships through public relation efforts within the marketing and commercial department. She also served as the medical speaker at several advisory boards to develop medical support for commercial products. In August 2007, Dr. Nia was appointed to the Oncology Clinical Specialist role at Alexion. In this role she was responsible for developing and implementing guidelines and procedures for appropriate screening and differential diagnosis for ultra-rare orphan diseases at the Northeast largest hematology/oncology treatment centers. Dr. Nia is to achieve this goal though the highest level of clinical expertise and an integral understanding of the account’s business model. This role was critical to the ongoing success of the product launch at Alexion.
In January 2009, Dr. Nia was promoted to lead national diagnostic initiatives at Alexion to support primary strategic imperative of identifying patients with ultra- rare orphan diseases. She is currently leading a national team in the US to support accurate diagnosis of patients to improve patient care. In 2011 till present, Dr. Nia’s role expanded to a global level leader heading up the clinical department to impact patient identification by broadening availability of high quality patient assessment diagnostic techniques.