Cambridge, U.K. based drug maker AstraZeneca announced today that Aradhana Sarin will take over as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO). She is currently the CFO of Alexion Pharmaceutical, a Boston based drug maker. 

Last December, AstraZeneca announced its purchase of Alexion for $39 billion in cash and stock. This will expand its offering of treatments for rare diseases, including Soliris, which treats a rare blood disorder.

Sarin will assume the CFO role at AstraZeneca upon closing of its acquisition of Alexion, expected to take place in the third quarter of 2021 at which point Sarin will be based in the U.K.

AstraZeneca, with a market value of $149 billion, is a global biopharmaceutical company. It focuses on the discovery, development and commercialization of prescription medicines in oncology and bio-pharmaceuticals, including cardiovascular, renal, metabolism and respiratory and and auto-immunological, infection and vaccines, and neuroscience. AstraZeneca operates in over 100 countries and its medicines are used by millions of patients worldwide.

AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 Vaccine

 AstraZeneca has been in the news over the past year due to its vaccine for COVID-19, developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford.

Earlier this year, several countries temporarily suspended use of the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine due to concerns over blood-clotting problems. But studies show that the clotting occurs very rarely among those receiving the vaccine.  

Today the vaccine, which is backed by the World Health Organization, is approved for use in more than 100 countries.  

More than 300 million doses of the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine have been produced so far by the company and its manufacturing partners. This includes more than 20 million doses administered in the European Union and the United Kingdom; with an additional 27 million doses of a version known as Covishield in India.

Unlike many of the other COVID-19 vaccines, which are expensive and must be stored at very low temperatures, the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine can be kept in an ordinary fridge and costs a few dollars per dose.

By the end of this year, AstraZeneca plans to produce 3 billion doses of the vaccine, including 170 million to be distributed to low-and-middle countries. As a result, the company could play a major role in quelling the pandemic, according to Nature.

From Wall Street to Astra Zeneca CFO

Aradhana Sarin joined Alexion in 2017, serving as Chief Business and Strategy Officer. In 2019, she was appointed Chief Financial Officer. 

Earlier, she was a Managing Director at Citi Global Banking in New York, where she advised clients in the life sciences and biopharmaceutical sectors. Before that, she was a Managing Director, Healthcare Investment Banking, at UBS in New York and San Francisco and worked at JP Morgan in New York.

Prior to her banking career, Sarin trained as a medical doctor in India and spent two years practicing in both India and Africa. In 2000, she received her MBA from Stanford Business School, after earning her medical degree from the University of Delhi in 1996.

In 1990, she graduated from the Delhi Public School, R.K.Puram, a private day school in New Delhi. It currently charges about $2,500 in annual tuition and other fees, which puts it out of reach of most middle class Indian families.

One of Aradhana Sarin’s immediate tasks as CFO of AstraZeneca will likely be to improve the finances of its COVID-19 vaccine operations. The company and Oxford University have said they will sell the vaccine at no profit. But the company is currently losing money on the product reportedly due to reduced production volume.

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