Dr. Kathrin Jansen is senior vice president of Vaccine Research and Early Development at Pfizer Inc. In 2006, Dr. Jansen joined Wyeth, now part of Pfizer, as senior vice president, responsible for leading vaccine research with a focus on infectious disease targets, early development and clinical testing. In this capacity, she and colleagues at Pfizer supported the pediatric licensure of Prevnar 13® and the adult licensure application of Prevnar 13, as well as the Community Acquired Pneumonia Immunization Trial for Adults (CAPiTA). In addition, she and her group directed the Company's proof-of-concept Phase 2 clinical evaluation of the Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B vaccine and Phase 1 trial for the Staphylococcus aureus vaccine.
Prior to joining Wyeth, Dr. Jansen served as VaxGen's chief scientific officer and senior vice president for Research and Development with responsibility for VaxGen's late-stage development pipeline and its anthrax and smallpox vaccine programs. Earlier in her career, Dr. Jansen worked at Merck Research Laboratories for 12 years where she directed a number of vaccine research efforts, including Merck's novel bacterial vaccine programs. Notably, her efforts led to the licensure of the world's first cervical cancer vaccine for the prevention of human papillomavirus infection (HPV).
Dr. Jansen was appointed an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 2010. She received her doctoral degree in microbiology, biochemistry and genetics from Phillips Universitat, Marburg, Germany. Following completion of her formal training and postdoctoral work at the Institute for Mikrobiologie in Marburg, Dr. Jansen continued her training with Professor G.P. Hess at Cornell University. She then joined the Glaxo Institute for Molecular Biology in Geneva, Switzerland.
