Building a Tumour tissue bank for $1M a day Children’s Cancer Research and Treatment Centre

Dr Sonit Handa | Building a Tumour tissue bank for $1M a day Children’s Cancer Research and Treatment Centre | Pharma Prescribed Dr Sonit Handa is the founder and CEO of Biovance Consulting, where he helps biopharma leaders navigate global launches, operating-model transformations and post-merger integrations. He trained as a physician in India, then moved to the United States — drawn to the intersection of medicine, science, technology and business. His path started with a swerve. Watching everyone around him in medical school run the same race toward the same specialties, Sonit went looking for the thing beyond traditional medicine. He found it in the late-90s wave of medical transcription being outsourced to India — his first glimpse of technology transforming healthcare — and followed it into biomedical and tissue engineering in the US. That led to St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis: a non-profit where no family pays for treatment, funded entirely by donation to the tune of roughly a million dollars a day. Sonit was hired to build the operations of its tissue bank — 25 years of samples stored without a proper database — so researchers could actually find and request what they needed and turn it into discoveries for children with cancer. He's candid about how he got there: cold emails through the night, visa deadlines, and one CSO in the city he was already living in who wrote back. From there the conversation opens out into the ideas that run through his work: why culture is an emotion you feel, not a line in a job description; why EQ will matter as much as IQ for the next generation; why change management is the one discipline AI makes non-negotiable; and the ethics of drug pricing seen from both sides of the world. Warm, wide-ranging and genuinely reflective — a reminder that, looking back, the dots connect. 🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Ks5oLfSDf0u9F1I8GUjti Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/adam-walkers-pharma-prescribed-podcast/id1829715970 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1a43eb87-b83e-441d-9a87-321263e3f821/adam-walker%E2%80%99s-pharma-prescribed-podcast Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes 🔗 RELATED EPISODE Sonit and Adam return again and again to kindness and cultural fit — the same ground Graham Allcott (Think Productive) covers on KIND, psychological safety and the quiet power of kindness at work: ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/1i1_TIZRBmI 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/04glB17p7bBWVmLjlwIO7z 🍎 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/graham-allcott-on-kind-psychological-safety-the-quiet/id1829715970?i=1000778402287 ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:35 Meet Dr Sonit Handa 1:00 Mission and approach 2:00 From India to the US 3:00 A tech spark in medicine 5:00 The St Jude tissue bank 8:00 Immigration and kindness 11:00 Choosing the MBA path 14:00 Building Biovance Consulting 16:00 Support and advice for students 22:00 AI, EQ and attention 28:00 A consultant's problem-solving 31:00 The change management playbook 41:00 Ethics and access 46:00 Quickfire and close 👤 ABOUT DR SONIT HANDA Founder and CEO of Biovance Consulting. Physician trained in India, with graduate study in biomedical and cell/tissue engineering in the US. More than two decades in life-science leadership across clinical development, regulatory affairs, market access, commercial operations and transformation. Advisor to biopharma leaders on aligning strategy with execution — global launches, operating-model change and post-merger integration. Mentor to students entering the field. 💼 Search "Sonit Handa" on LinkedIn 🌐 https://www.biovanceconsulting.com 🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast #SonitHanda #BiovanceConsulting #StJude #ChangeManagement #LifeSciences #PharmaPrescribed #PharmaConsulting #EQatWork #AIandWork #MarketAccess #PostMergerIntegration