Webinars

Patricia C. Ryan, PhD, Senior Director, Clinical Pharmacology and Safety Sciences, AstraZeneca

Dr. Patricia Ryan has over 30 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry with an emphasis on nonclinical safety testing of biologics and vaccines. Currently, she is the Strategic Toxicology Lead for Infectious Diseases at AstraZeneca and leads nonclinical safety strategy for this therapy area in Safety Sciences. Before that, she directed toxicology in Biologics Safety Assessment at MedImmune.

Dr. Ryan is currently President of the American College of Toxicology. she has been an active member of ACT since 2004. She was elected to the Education Committee in 2008 and to Council in 2012. While on Council, she chaired the Education Committee. She served as ACT Secretary from 2021–2022. She has served on the Program Committee multiple times. She is also a member of the Society of Toxicology and represents AZ on the IQ Consortium DruSafe Leadership Group.

Dr. Ryan obtained her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Virginia and her PhD in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University. She trained as a postdoctoral scientist at SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline).

Jeff Tepper, PhD, DABT, DSP, Independent Consultant, Tepper Nonclinical Consulting

Dr. Jeff Tepper is a nonclinical toxicologist with over 40 years of experience in inhalation toxicology and respiratory pharmacology. He has more than 60 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. He earned his PhD from the University of Rochester and is board-certified in both toxicology and safety pharmacology. Previously, he worked as a Project Scientist contracted to the US EPA, a Senior Scientist at Genentech, Director of Pharmacology at Bayer Biotechnology, and VP of Pharmacology/Toxicology at Catalyst Biosciences. He helped establish Aerovance Inc., a respiratory biotech company, where he headed the Pharmacology/Toxicology department. He is the current Past President of the American College of Toxicology and has held similar roles with the Northern California Society of Toxicology and the Roundtable of Toxicology Consultants. He is also a board member of the Association of Inhalation Toxicologists. Since 2007, Dr. Tepper has worked as an independent toxicology consultant supporting virtual startups to multinational corporations developing biopharmaceuticals.

Jacintha Shenton, PhD, Associate Vice President, Amgen

Dr. Jacintha Shenton is an Associate Vice President at Amgen, where she leads the Portfolio, Pharmacology, and Data Sciences function within Translational Safety & Risk Sciences. In this role, she oversees all nonclinical safety programs across Amgen’s drug development pipeline, with responsibility for teams comprising toxicologists, in vitro pharmacologists, and data scientists. Prior to Amgen, Dr. Shenton held roles of increasing responsibility in nonclinical safety at several other pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Shenton is actively engaged in industry organizations. Currently, Dr. Shenton represents Amgen on the IQ DruSafe Leadership Group and is the alternate PhRMA representative on the ICH Reflection Paper small drafting team. Previously, Dr. Shenton has held multiple leadership roles within BioSafe, including serving as Chair in 2022. In that capacity, she played a pivotal role in organizing the annual FDA/BioSafe/DruSafe meeting. In addition, Dr. Shenton co-lead the BIO NAMs Task Force and is the lead author of the manuscript “Opportunities and insights from pharmaceutical companies on the current use of new approach methodologies in nonclinical safety assessment,” published in 2025. She is a strong advocate for the use of NAMs-based nonclinical safety packages to support regulatory filings and supports their broader application when scientifically justified. Dr. Shenton completed her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Toronto with a focus on immunotoxicology.

Laralynne Przybyla, PhD, Scientific Director, Amgen

Dr. Laralynne Przybyla is a Scientific Director at Amgen, where she leads strategy and cross-functional integration for New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) and complex human-relevant in vitro model systems across research and development. Here, she works at the intersection of science, data, and regulatory strategy to advance the effective implementation of NAMs for defined decision-making contexts across the drug development pipeline. Previously, Dr. Przybyla led the Disease Mechanisms and Models Team at Arena Bioworks to integrate human genetics, disease-relevant models, and high-throughput screening approaches with a goal of uncovering mechanisms of human disease and identifying new therapeutic opportunities. Prior to that, she was an Associate Professor at UCSF and UC Scientific Director at the Laboratory for Genomics Research, a joint industry-academia hybrid institute between UCSF, UC Berkeley, and GSK. She obtained her PhD in Biology from MIT and has led multidisciplinary technology development efforts spanning academia and industry to advance human-relevant experimental platforms and accelerate therapeutic development across neuroscience, autoimmune disease, oncology, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and other therapeutic areas.

Ronald Wange, PhD, Principal Consultant, Aclairo

Dr. Ronald Wange is a Principal Consultant at the Aclairo Pharmaceutical Development Group, which he joined after a 20-year career in the Office of New Drugs (OND) in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the US FDA. He served as a Pharm-Tox reviewer, a Pharm-Tox supervisor and an Associate Director for Pharmacology and Toxicology. In this later role, he was a member of the leadership team for the Pharm-Tox discipline in OND and provided expert scientific and regulatory policy support for all Pharm-Tox and Clinical Review Divisions. Together with FDA colleagues, Dr. Wange led the writing of the draft FDA guidance on The Nonclinical Safety Assessment of Oligonucleotide-based Therapeutics and served as deputy FDA Topic Lead for ICH S13, which will provide internationally harmonized guidance on this topic. Dr. Wange has a BS in Biochemistry from the University of California, Riverside and a PhD in Pharmacology from Vanderbilt University.