Dr Karine Litherland currently heads the Translational Development group at Basilea Pharmaceutica in Switzerland. Her career in pharmaceutical R&D has taken her from large pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca in the UK and Novartis in Switzerland, where she worked across a broad range of therapeutic areas, to the more focused environment of Basilea, where she contributes to the development of novel anti-infective therapies.
Throughout her career, Karine has been fascinated by the challenge of turning promising science into medicines. Her work at Basilea focuses on bridging preclinical and clinical development, bringing together pharmacology, toxicology, PK/PD, and clinical pharmacology to guide the progression of new antibacterial and antifungal agents from the laboratory into the clinic and beyond.
Karine particularly enjoys the scientific and collaborative challenges of drug development, from understanding how preclinical findings translate to humans to designing first-in-human studies and informing dose selection and clinical development strategies. Ultimately, she is motivated by the opportunity to translate scientific discoveries into new treatment options for patients with serious infections.