Dr. Sonia Ferreira King has over 10 years of experience in healthcare consulting, focusing on rare diseases. At SAI, she is the in-house expert for novel product development and technologies, including gene therapy and gene editing.
Dr. King plays an integral role at SAI in projects focusing on regenerative medicine and novel therapies. She gained a deep understanding of gene- and cell-based approaches during her PhD focusing on hemoglobinopathies and has since branched her expertise out to muscle wasting, CNS, and lysosomal storage disorders.
Dr. King attends the ESGCT and ASGCT congresses annually and has established a strong network of contacts within academia and industry that are highly knowledgeable in genetic manipulation and regenerative medicine. In addition, Dr. King has close regulatory connections in Europe and Brazil.
Dr. King received her PhD in cell, gene, and tissue therapy, and an MS with honors in biomedical sciences from the School of Medicine at King’s College London. During her academic tenure, she was part of the team who developed the GLOBE vector (OTL-300) that has shown clinical proof-of-concept and demonstrated efficacy in transfusion-dependent thalassemia. Prior to joining consultancy, Dr. King worked as stem cell gene therapy postgrad investigator at GSK and was responsible for the preclinical work submitted as part of Strimvelis IND on ADA-SCID.