Pfizer: Tanya Alcorn Moves to Lead Hospitals & Biosimilars

Continuing her career at Pfizer, Tanya Alcorn is stepping into the role of President, Global Hospital and Biosimilars after her three-year tenure as SVP Operations.

Her role involves working with Pfizer’s portfolio of injectables and biosimilars, which are medicines specifically designed to have similar properties to existing drugs.

Tanya Alcorn said on LinkedIn: “I am thrilled to share my new role as President of Pfizer’s Global Hospital & Biosimilars Organisation!”

“This new organisation elevates and integrates our global generic sterile injectables and biosimilars portfolio into a single end-to-end model, bringing together commercial, manufacturing and supply functions under dedicated leadership.”

Tanya Alcorn’s career so far

After receiving a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Science from Rutgers University, Tanya Alcorn joined Pfizer in 1999.

Her first role was a Quality Assurance Specialist, which she held for almost nine years before moving within the company in 2008.

She was a Senior Director in Technology and Biotechnology Network Strategy, where she was responsible for equipment, process validation and process informatics.

Tanya’s next roles at Pfizer involved working in the global supply chain, in essential health and rare disease.

Between 2018 and 2022, she was Vice President, BioPharma Global Supply Chain, overseeing demand, supply and inventory management for more than 600 products across 175 markets.

She was responsible for the global end-to-end supply chain for Pfizer’s BioPharma portfolio of internal and external manufacturing assets.

Before her current role, Tanya was Senior Vice President of Operations at Pfizer, holding the position for more than three years.

She has now moved to become President of Pfizer’s Global Hospital and Biosimilars organisation, continuing her 26-year career at the company.

Talking about the move to her new role, Tanya says she is “honoured by the opportunity to lead this amazing organisation and excited for the journey ahead”.

How Pfizer uses biosimilars

As part of the global team at Pfizer, Tanya works alongside the company’s mission to make breakthroughs that change patients’ lives.

The company aims to set the standard for quality, safety and value in the discovery, development and manufacturing of healthcare products.

As well as vaccines, Pfizer produces biologics and biosimilars, with Tanya being responsible for the latter.

Biosimilars are copies of biologics, which are medicines made with biological materials.

Biologics are highly complex molecules that are grown rather than synthesised, which means that biosimilars cannot be exact copies.

Instead of this, biosimilars mimic the active ingredient used in biologics, and must be similar to the biologic in structure and function.

Benefits of producing biologics include a lower cost to consumers and increasing patient access.

“Serving approximately 100 million patients annually across more than 100 markets globally, our portfolio of more than 300 products includes critical and life-saving medications – including more than 50 products on the US FDA and World Health Organisation Essential Medicine Lists, as well as more than 50 exclusive molecules,” Tanya says.

“We believe this new organisational E2E ‘plant to patient’ model will create a fit-for-purpose approach to managing, optimising and prioritising these critical product lines, enable faster decision making and ultimately help us achieve our goal of serving patients more efficiently and effectively.”