Sheila Mikhail has over 20 years of biopharmaceutical leadership experience and is chief executive officer and cofounder of Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, Inc. (AskBio), a company she started in 2001.
Mikhail assumed leadership of AskBio in April 2017. Since that time, she has built three GMP manufacturing facilities in Spain. AskBio’s excess capacity is sold under the tradename Viralgen for CDMO services and TAAV for plasmid supply. With $235 million in Series A funding, she built the company to over 350 employees operating in five countries. Under her leadership, AskBio has advanced programs into the clinic for Pompe and late stage heart failure. In December 2020, Mikhail led the negotiation of the $4 billion AskBio acquisition by Bayer AG. For her work in founding and leading AskBio, Mikhail was recognized as the Ernst & Young 2021 Overall National Entrepreneur of the Year.
Prior to her current role, Mikhail served as chief executive officer and cofounder of Bamboo Therapeutics, which advanced a therapeutic for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (which is currently in pivotal clinical trials) and built a GMP manufacturing facility. Bamboo was acquired by Pfizer in August 2016 in a deal valued at $827 million. Prior to that, she was part of the management team at Chatham Therapeutics, which was acquired by Baxter in 2014. Mikhail practiced law for more than 15 years. During that time, she founded Life Sciences Law, a boutique law firm which serviced clients such as Bayer, Gilead, GSK, Sanofi and Aventis. Prior to moving to North Carolina in 2000, she practiced law with Ropes and Gray in Boston and was a management consultant with AT Kearney in Chicago.
She earned a JD with honors from Northwestern University, a finance MBA with honors from the University of Chicago, and a BS with highest honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.