Rare Disease Day Insight: Epilepsy Care Gaps in Pregnancy with UCB’s Andrea Wilkinson — Episode 244

In this week’s episode of the Xtalks Life Science Podcast, host Ayesha Rashid, Senior Life Science Journalist at Xtalks, spoke with Andrea Wilkinson, Global Head of Patient Engagement & Advocacy, Epilepsy & Neuromuscular at UCB, a company dedicated to developing solutions for autoimmune and neurological conditions such as epilepsy.

With fewer than 5% of clinical trials including pregnant women, major knowledge gaps persist, particularly for women with epilepsy. In this episode, we look at new research revealing the treatment fears, uncertainty and barriers they face during pregnancy and motherhood, and what must change to better support informed decision-making.

Andrea is a biotech and health tech executive who has led strategic product launches for over 30 breakthrough biopharmaceutical therapies. Focused on improving outcomes for patients, particularly in rare diseases, she has worked with early- to late-stage launch teams at AstraZeneca/MedImmune, Takeda and Sanofi Pasteur. She develops platform tools, stakeholder roadmaps and patient-centered advocacy campaigns to support first-in-class medicines and address access, reimbursement, regulatory and commercial barriers. Andrea is also an angel investor with Pipeline Angels and serves on the boards of Project Open Hand and the HBA Pacific Region. She holds a BA from Louisiana Tech University.

Tune in to learn more about the unmet needs, challenges and advancements in the rare disease and epilepsy spaces.

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