Dr. Stefan
Platz

Stefan Platz is the Senior Vice President of Clinical Pharmacology and Safety Sciences within AstraZeneca’s BioPharmaceuticals R&D unit. In this role, Stefan is responsible for the non-clinical safety assessment of all drug candidates, delivery of non-clinical and clinical bioanalysis strategies and clinical pharmacology and pharmacometrics. He leads a global department of 600 scientists spread across Sweden, UK and the US.

Stefan has a degree in veterinary medicine from the University of Munich and is a German certified veterinary pathologist as well as Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology. He started his career in 1996 at Boehringer-Ingelheim. Before joining AstraZeneca in February 2012, Stefan led the non-clinical safety organisations for Hoffmann-La Roche in both Basel and Palo Alto. During this time period he also had extended periods of strategic responsibilities for the early safety screening as well as biologics safety.

Stefan is particularly interested in exploring novel approaches and technologies to better predict human safety based on in vitro and in silico data. Recent investments by AstraZeneca in microphysiological systems may help to understand safety risks in patients based on a dynamic cell system mimicking full organ functionality. Together with modelling and simulation of human data this might accelerate drug development and result in a reduction in number of animal used in preclinical testing.