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Dominique Costantini at BioAlliance Pharma’s laboratory in Paris, France. |  esistance to treatment causes therapeutic failure and is a recognised public health problem. BioAlliance Pharma was set up in 1997 to meet the need for innovative drugs and technologies in this area. It has become a world leader in predictive assays which enable individual tailoring of treatments to improve adherence to existing drugs. Its HIV drug resistance test, Phenoscript™, is already on the market. Dominique Costantini, the company’s chief executive, graduated in medicine and immunology, and spent 16 years working in the pharmaceutical industry before co-founding the company with its chief operations officer, Gilles Avenard. She gained extensive management experience in research, development and medico-marketing, particularly regarding product registration and launches. After working for three firms which merged into larger groups, she decided it was time to set up her own business.
Mixed talents
She does not feel that being a woman has put her at a disadvantage. “I was not aware of any particular prejudice,” she says. “The problems of being chief executive are not specifically gender-related. It is an enormous challenge for anybody to set up a high-tech business in a harsh economic environment.
“During three successful fund-raising rounds, we had to convince potential financial backers that we had solid expertise in the creative, technical and regulatory areas. Our capacity to innovate lies in having a mixture of talented people, regardless of their gender. Of course, the investment world is a predominantly male one, so eyebrows might have been raised if there were only women on the team.”
Stress factor
Some two-thirds of BioAlliance’s research staff are female, and wages policy is based on the French chemicals industry’s equal pay agreement. But with various products at an advanced stage of clinical trials, statutory maternity leave can cause problems. “Of course I support this right,” asserts Costantini, “but it hard to live with. You cannot replace people when they are away, and delays are highly detrimental. Specific government assistance for buying in extra expertise would be extremely useful.”
Costantini is not surprised that there are so few women at her level in the industry. “The biotech sector is an aggressive place for new entrepreneurs,” she says, “and gender issues may be accentuated in an unstable economic environment. The dire lack of finance offers little long-term job security, so stress levels are high. Some women may also shy away from the incessant need to prove their professionalism.
“A high level of commitment to innovative therapies is essential in a small company like ours, otherwise it is better to work in a larger group,” she concludes. Flotation is a serious option for future fund-raising, and the company may grow rapidly as a result. So people on the payroll may in any case soon find themselves working for a larger concern.
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WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS