{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Impactful Breakthroughs","title":"Leesa Gentry - Chief Clinical Officer at RenovoRX","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2348,"description":"While clinical science has made tremendous strides over the last few decades, the clinical operations stringing it all together have barely moved. Today’s guest, Leesa Gentry, can’t believe that gap still exists, and has spent most of her career working on it.\nLeesa is the Chief Clinical Officer at RenovoRX, a Bay Area based life sciences company developing innovative targeted oncology therapies and delivery systems. On this episode of Impactful Breakthroughs, she speaks with Zach Gobst about lean teams, sponsor and CRO relationships, and where AI belongs in clinical research.\nA consistent throughline in their conversation is Leesa’s dedication to fostering human relationships to best advance the research. She believes that CRO dynamics are inherently set up to be adversarial with constant cost and time pressure. With most sponsors “rolling studies into a ball and tossing it over a fence,” her solution is to envelop CROs directly into her teams, empowering them to truly contribute.\nHer take on AI is direct and actionable: It’s here to stay, so figure out how you can use it to clear your head so you can think about what is around the corner, and keep a human in anything that involves patient care.\nTimestamps\n\n00:00 Episode Start\n02:30 How Leesa went from psychology to clinical research\n05:00 Precision medicine and the end of the linear path\n06:50 What led Leesa to RenovoRx over two other offers\n08:05 A de-risked drug delivered straight to the tumor\n11:15 What a lean clinical team actually needs\n13:55 Why Leesa is often called a cowboy\n20:25 Building one team across cultures\n23:10 Running a Phase III without a CRO\n30:45 Invest in metrics that actually matter\n32:10 What 30 years of revolutions taught Leesa about AI\n36:50 Leesa's mentors and closing reflections\nKey Takeaways\nDon’t be afraid of the next challenge. Leesa has been called a cowboy on more than one occasion in her career, crediting the name to her habit of taking on work people have already claimed is...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/uUl5NjCb9mY4i46LGv4GWJrr5WVj3WxuYTgjBphYmcc/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS85MDM0/ZDk5OWI2YTcwYWRh/NTM0NzIyODViMjU4/ODlmZS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}