Featured Researcher: Ashley Koegel – Bristol Myers Squibb

Ashley Koegel, MD, is executive director and Early Clinical Development lead at Bristol Myers Squibb’s Brisbane R&D site, where she leads the design and implementation of clinical studies to assess the safety and efficacy of potential medicines in the company’s pipeline. In her role, Ashley leverages her clinical and scientific background to support the Early Clinical Development leadership team's strategic priorities and advance promising assets through clinical trials to produce innovative therapies for patients.

Working collaboratively across teams, Ashley ensures that various business units feed into the discovery, development, implementation and access that is required to bring potential new therapies forward, allowing for the rapid execution and commercialization of innovative treatment options — which ultimately gives more patients access to life-changing medical care. Ashley has been a key contributor to Bristol Myers Squibb’s discovery and early development strategy with next-generation CAR T products, including “off-the-shelf” cell therapies and next-generation T cell engineering approaches.

Since joining Bristol Myers Squibb, Ashley has led several cell therapy programs from Investigational New Drug Application (IND) through Phase 1, supported numerous discovery programs, and collaborated on external partnerships including Arsenal Bio, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and JW Therapeutics. Ashley assumed leadership of the early clinical development of cell therapy in non-oncology indications and acts as a key contributor to the overall strategy for the expansion of CAR T cell therapy into new therapeutic areas. In this capacity, she has worked cross-functionally and cross-therapeutically to accelerate autologous CD19 NEX-T TM CAR T into the clinic and support a pipeline of next-gen cell therapy technologies targeted for a broad range of rheumatology and neuroinflammatory autoimmune indications.

Ashley graduated from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and participated in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute undergraduate research program. She earned her MD from Stanford University and subsequently trained in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, completing her clinical fellowship in pediatric hematology and oncology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Ashley was a Damon Runyon Physician Scientist awardee in the lab of Wendell Lim, a world-class CAR T scientist and biotech founder, where she engineered next-generation CAR T cells to treat acute myeloid leukemia.