Koen Sandra

Meet Koen Sandra

Most important lesson
Find your passion and dream big – keeping in mind that dreams only come true through commitment and hard work. I have learned that it’s important to know yourself, to find what you are good at, what gives you satisfaction and – once you have found this – how collaborating with kindred spirits allows you to make a difference.

Biggest surprise
I have always been amazed by how dynamic our line of work is. As we adapt to the analytical needs of the pharma industry we experience first-hand how rapidly things change, and how the product pipeline keeps evolving. So far, the biggest surprise for me has been the recent exponential growth in our biopharma activities.

Key trends in pharmaceutical analysis
We have noticed a clear trend in addressing analytical needs more and more towards biological products. As a result, our focus has shifted from small chemical entities to antibody formats such as monoclonal antibodies, bi-specifics, antibody–drug conjugates and fusion proteins. Furthermore, immune, cell and gene therapies are the way of the future. All of these add to the complexity of the analytical work meaning that techniques like 2D-LC will become more widely applied and LC-MS will find an entry in routine environments.

Nominator comment: “One of the leading scientists today in the field of biopharmaceuticals characterization.”