Messages from Genentech
Dear colleagues,
It is with heavy hearts that we share with all of you the news that Ellie Guardino passed away yesterday. Many of you worked with Ellie during her ten years at Genentech, most recently as head of our oncology PHC program in PD. Through her unparalleled passion for oncology treatment advances and her kind, caring spirit, Ellie was an inspiration to everyone who knew her. This same abiding and selfless dedication meant that Ellie worked tirelessly for patients everywhere even while simultaneously fighting her own personal battle with cancer.
Our thoughts and prayers are with Ellie’s family and loved ones. Her life is a reminder of why we do what we do. She will truly be missed.
We will share the email below to the PD organization this morning and post it on PD Connect. There will also be a tribute posted on gWiz later this week that invites employees to share memories and thoughts.
Warm regards,
Levi and James
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Dear colleagues,
With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Ellie Guardino has passed away. Ellie held several roles within PD, most recently as head of the oncology PHC team. She dedicated her life to cancer patients as a researcher, oncologist and a PD colleague at Genentech and Roche even while fighting her own battle with cancer.
“I live my life with optimism and faith. It’s hope and high expectations that will make this world a better place. There’s way too much to do for me to have cancer. I can’t sit around and I won’t. My passion to change the outcome for patients is what gives me the resilience to carry on.” -- Ellie, 2017
Ellie joined Genentech in 2010 and led the development of several of our breast cancer medicines, most notably contributing to the design of the clinical trials that led to the approval of Kadcyla. While she was working at Genentech, she continued to serve as an adjunct faculty member at Stanford University, teaching students who will eventually move on to become our next generation of clinicians.
“Ellie was made to help better the world” -- Dr. Charlotte Jacobs
Her experience as an academic clinician and as a patient herself gave Ellie a unique perspective and devotion to finding ways to develop medicines faster, thereby helping more people.
Through various roles at Genentech and Roche on the Oncology, Safety and PHC teams, Ellie’s passion for making a difference for patients inspired all who encountered her. In 2017, Ellie was honored by the Stanford Women’s Cancer Center, who established a $100,000 seed grant in her name to advance cancer research. In 2020, Fierce Pharma selected Ellie as one of the Fiercest Women in Life Sciences.
Ellie’s legacy was celebrated by so many - a tribute to Ellie’s life was beautifully captured by colleagues at Stanford, and The Today Show profiled how Ellie worked to help people with cancer during COVID. Ellie will be remembered for the tenacity that she instilled in her patients while living with cancer. This same tenacity kept her going every day because it mattered for patients. May we all carry Ellie’s encouraging words with us as always.
“Wake up in the morning. Look and see what you can do, what you can give, and enjoy the day. Be who you are, love who you are and have hope and faith. I think there is a lot of good to come.”
The passing of a colleague can be a difficult time, and we all grieve in different ways.
Lyra, our Mental Wellness/Employee Assistance Program (EAP), is available to assist you if you wish to speak with a grief counselor. Contact Lyra at roche.lyrahealth.com or by calling (844) 281-1753.
For our colleagues in Basel, the Employee Counseling team is available to assist you if you wish to speak with a grief counselor. Please reach out to them at basel.employee-counseling@roche.com or +41 (0)61 68 85777. You may also visit their gSite for assistance.
For contractors, Cigna Employee Assistance and Work/Life Support Program (EAP) is available as a resource if you wish to speak with a grief counselor. You can go towww.myCigna.com Employer ID: “prounlimited” or call 1.877.622.4327 for support.
Warm regards,
Levi and James
Ellie Guardino—Genentech
by Ben Adams | Fierce Pharma Special Report
Ellie Guardino has had an illustrious career. She started out in academia, training and working at the best universities in the world on cutting-edge cancer research, before moving over to Roche’s biologics arm Genentech—one of, if not the most, respected oncology biotechs in the world.
But it's not just her success that strikes you: During the interview for this profile, Guardino matter-of-factly says she has stage 4 melanoma. Her follow-up to that statement is not about her, but about how this diagnosis, which she lives with while still working, has made her truly understand the patient journey—and that's experience she is now using at Genentech.
Going back to the start, Guardino began with “many opportunities and strong female mentors,” she said, but she was exposed as a young child to the disease she would in the future fight both professionally and personally.
“I was influenced early on by having a lot of people at a young age to family members with cancer, as well as friends. I had a friend who carried a gene mutation which meant members of her family died; her twin brother, in fact, died at just 16 from this.
“Her dad then died young of colon cancer, and two other brothers died of cancer, again at young age. And of course she carries the gene, as does her daughter, so she also carries that fear with her every day. That was, to say the least, impactful for me and my life.”
That was a big motivator early on, and after leaving UCLA, she helped develop a melanoma cancer drug. This, she said, was “an amazing opportunity to be one of the first people to work on monoclonal antibodies.”
The early experience helped her to see where the clinical needs were for cancer, and where the gaps are for patients.
Guardino went to Harvard for her residency but ended up at Stanford, which is well known for its work on cancer immunotherapy, where she did her fellowship in oncology, and then stayed on.
She helped work on early translational and phase 1/2 work, but said she was yearning “to see things through to phase 3,” something that most academic centers do not typically have the funds or resources to do.
That's where Genentech comes in. “They had an opportunity for me to work on the [breast cancer antibody-drug conjugate] Kadcyla program. I had been pretty heavily involved on HER2-positive breast cancer work up until that point,” she said, and took the opportunity for it to be taken past the early clinical stage, and onto approval.
She worked with the FDA on a key trial for the drug, helping show its inherent value, and then went on to be responsible for the global filing for Kadcyla, which was eventually approved for certain HER2-positive breast cancer patients.
“So that was an incredible journey: to take things from bench to bedside, and seeing the impact of not just developing a drug with potential, but seeing that realized by being part of a team that can deliver it to patients.” She then went to head up Genentech’s breast cancer focus, working on a range of other drugs, including Perjeta, and a new formulation of the original HER2-positive breast cancer med Herceptin.
After spending her career developing drugs for patients, she now has a much deeper and personal sense of what it means to actually be a patient. A few years ago, she received her melanoma diagnosis, and the disease has unfortunately spread.
“With the support of Genentech, I have been able to continue to try and create a tremendous impact in the work I am doing, despite fighting this disease,” she said. “And I think this has given me an extra hat: I have the research hat; I have the development hat; and now I have the patient hat. It just gives me a unique perspective on why it so critical that we break down barriers and we do better at developing drugs faster.”