Quality Control
Vince Anicetti, senior vice president of global quality at Coherus Biosciences, plays a key role in the field of multinational biosimilar drug development.
An invisible world -- and a potential career -- revealed itself to Vince Anicetti in his first microbiology class at SF State. ''One of the standard things you do in Micro 101 is put a Petri dish on your desk, then seal it up and come back a week later, and there are all these little white colonies where bacteria landed on the plate,'' he explains.
It was the start of a fascination that led to a 30-year global career in pharmaceutical and biotech companies for Anicetti (B.A., '77; M.S., '87), now the senior vice president of quality and compliance at Coherus Biosciences. Located in Redwood City, the company manufactures biologic biosimilar therapies. These therapies are molecular copies of such proteins as antibodies, tissues or living cells that can be used to treat a variety of diseases from rheumatoid arthritis to cancer.
Today, Anicetti would likely be more dismayed than intrigued to see signs of bacterial contamination, as he oversees the quality of the biologic drugs manufactured by Coherus. ''I like quality because I care deeply just like everyone else I work with about making products that are safe and effective, but it also keeps me very close to the science,'' he says. ''You really need to understand the technology and understand where the risks are.''
Anicetti has worked at several leading biotech companies, including Genentech while working on his master's in clinical/biomedical sciences. He was grateful for the flexibility of his professors, who allowed him to work on his course projects remotely. ''SF State was one of the few universities around at the time where people had this openness to trying different things for working students like me,'' he recalls.
SF State faculty Linda Blackwood and the late Anthony Catena inspired Anicetti's own desire to teach. As head of classes in pharmaceutical quality and regulation at the Keck Graduate Institute, he encourages his students to network and seek out leadership positions as soon as possible, such as he did at SF State as head of the microbiology club. ''You can never start soon enough in developing your leadership skills and learning how to lead teams of people. It helps you move up if you learn and practice those skills at every opportunity.''
Anicetti sees a tremendous opportunity for today's SF State students in the Bay Area's concentration of biotech companies. As a member of the SF State Foundation Board of Directors, he is looking for ways to build partnerships with these firms.
''I'd like to see us start building up that relationship, whether that means more internships, joint research or simply creating better recruiting and training for students,'' he suggests. ''We have a real gem in State.''
Photo by NOAH BERGER