Sara Colombetti
Senior Leader-Head of Translational Pharmacology Roche
Sara received her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular biology at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan (Italy). After a post-doc in cancer immunotherapy at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (Lausanne branch) and later at Cytos Biotechnology (Zurich) she joined Roche in 2009 as team leader in thePharmacology Department. In 2018, she was appointed Global Head of Oncology Discovery Pharmacology, and more recently Head of Translational Pharmacology, part of the Oncology Discovery Unit within the Roche pharma Research and Development (pRED) division. The focus of the group is the development of cutting edge preclinical models for the evaluation of pRED Oncology portfolio assets.
Seminars
Wednesday 2nd December 2026
Evidence – Precision by Design: Accelerating Oncology Drug Discovery with High-Fidelity Models
8:10 am
- Leveraging integrated in vitro, in vivo, and translational approaches to better capture clinically relevant tumour biology and immune responses during drug discovery
- Understanding the strengths and limitations of different model platforms
- Evaluating how high-fidelity model systems can improve confidence in candidate selection and development decisions
Wednesday 2nd December 2026
Insights Exchange – What Drives Confidence in Translational Decision Making?
8:50 am
- Which datasets provide the greatest confidence when progressing a candidate?
- How can teams determine whether a preclinical signal is meaningful enough to justify investment?
- What are the biggest barriers to translating promising biology into clinical success?
- Audience Q&A
