LOS for SM NC Awards 20210415

April 3, 2021

N.C. Awards Committee
North Carolina Department of
Natural and Cultural Resources
109 East Jones Street, Suite 315
Raleigh, North Carolina 27601

Re: North Carolina Awards Nomination – Public Service category ▪ Sheila Mikhail, JD, MBA

Dear North Carolina Awards Committee,

I am writing this letter to support the nomination of Sheila Ann Mikhail for recipient of a North Carolina Award for Public Service. Sheila has devoted her career in life sciences to bringing cutting edge therapies to the clinic to help treat people who were previously thought to be untreatable. I have neither the time, nor the space in this letter to go through all the technologies that she has helped develop and the companies she has helped build. This Awards Committee only need to look at the work of Bamboo Therapeutics (now owned by Pfizer), Asklepios Biopharmaceuticals (AskBio, now owned by Bayer), and one of her most recent companies, Jurata Thin Film, to see her track record.

Bamboo developed a gene therapy now in late-stage clinical trials to treat Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a debilitating condition which presents most commonly in young boys, minimizing their mobility and drastically reducing their life expectancy. AskBio has developed multiple gene therapy candidates now in clinical trials, including one for Parkinson’s Disease and one for Congestive Heart Failure. Jurata Thin Film, one of her most recent projects, is commercializing a platform technology capable of stabilizing vaccines and biologics at room temperature for years, greatly expanding access to these life-saving technologies for people throughout the world.

Sheila Mikhail does this work because she honestly wants to help as many people as possible.

I met Sheila in the Spring of 2020 through a mentor-mentee program for women working in advanced therapeutics (e.g. gene therapy, cell therapy, etc.). As her mentee, she gave me more of her time than was requested by the program, listening to my career ambitions, giving me advice, and offering her support. A couple of months after becoming my mentor, she told me about her new company, Jurata Thin Film, and asked me to come on board as the company’s first employee. It was a daunting opportunity, but after reading about Jurata’s technology, I realized it was an opportunity I could not pass up.

Sheila is doing everything she can to build Jurata and commercialize our thin film technology as quickly as possible. The novel coronavirus pandemic has brought to light many of the issues with vaccine distribution and storage, both of which would be significantly improved by Jurata’s thin film technology. Sheila recognized what our technology could mean for the current and, potentially, future pandemics, and is doing everything she can to mitigate its effects.

Sheila Mikhail is deserving of this award because she is an incredible leader and has done everything she can to benefit the people of North Carolina, as well as others throughout the world.

Sincerely,

Megan Livingston