Five Questions with Aimee Murphy, VP of Clinical Operations at Totus Medicines

Aimee Murphy serves as Vice President, Clinical Operations at Totus Medicines. Aimee has over 25 years of experience working in clinical operations and oncology and previously held roles at Gilead Sciences and several acquired pharmaceutical companies.

We spoke with Aimee recently to learn more about what excites her about her work and drives her day-in and day-out to overcome the challenges of a first-in-human trial.

Tell me about your job and how you got started in this field?

I oversee clinical programs for oncology drugs, including TOS-358’s Phase 1 trial. I graduated with a degree in biology because I love science, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do for a career. Post college, I was coincidentally introduced to clinical research when I pursued an internship. This led to my first job as a clinical trial assistant, and I have been in clinical operations and trial management ever since.

What drew you to Totus and made you decide to join us?

I’ve worked in small biotech companies most of my career, and after a 2-year opportunity at a larger pharmaceutical company, I was interested in getting back to a small company. I knew that leadership, culture, and strong science were the most important factors for me and I was impressed by Totus’s leadership team, their people-focused culture, and the potential of their platform technology and clinical program to create treatments for undruggable diseases.

What makes you excited to come to work every day??

I love coming to the office knowing I’ll be working with my amazing colleagues on an exciting program that could potentially positively impact patients suffering with cancer. We are in the early stages of the clinical study and every day there are new challenges and discoveries with the program, but we’re optimistic about making an impact.

What goal are you most passionate about achieving at Totus and what unique/niche skill do you bring to the table to achieve/support the achievement of that goal?

I am passionate about evaluating and advancing new drugs through clinical trials which can provide safe, effective treatment options for cancer patients. First-in-human clinical trials are unique and challenging with the need to balance speed of development with ensuring safe patient monitoring and careful evaluation to find the right dose and regimen for a new drug not tested in humans before. I’ve led multiple first-in-human clinical studies at early-phase companies, successfully navigating the challenges and now I’m helping meet our goal of delivering TOS-358 as a new effective therapy to patients.

What trend in drug discovery are you currently following and why do you think it's interesting?

One area I’m particularly interested in is how we make clinical trials more accessible and convenient for patient participation. Conventionally, patients have had to travel long distances, often for multiple days/weeks away from home and endure long clinic visits and procedures in order to participate in studies. With new technologies and innovative approaches to data collection, such as decentralized trials, home healthcare, web-based applications and wearables, we have opportunities to make trial participation more accessible, increase trial enrollment with a more diverse population, and provide more treatment options for patients.?