A New Era for SMA — Dr. Tracey Dawson, PhD, — SVP and U.S. Therapeutic Area Head of Neuroscience, Novartis.

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) has undergone one of the most remarkable transformations in modern medicine. A disease that once carried devastating consequences, particularly in its most severe forms, can now be treated with therapies designed to dramatically alter its course — especially when treatment begins early.

But medical progress creates a fascinating new question. What happens when you don’t just change the disease — you change what’s possible for the person living with it?

Because today’s SMA community includes children treated before symptoms emerge, young adults who have grown up in this new treatment era, and adults who have lived with SMA for decades and carry the consequences of disease that occurred before these therapies existed.

And that’s where our conversation today gets particularly interesting. Because the next challenge may not simply be developing better medicines. It may be helping people take full advantage of the lives those medicines make possible.

My guest is Dr. Tracey Dawson, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and U.S. Therapeutic Area Head of Neuroscience at Novartis (https://www.novartis.com/).

Dr. Dawson brings more than 25 years of experience across neuroscience, rare diseases, biotechnology and pharmaceutical leadership — and today we’re going to talk about the changing face of SMA, the evolution of the SMAshing My Limits initiative (https://www.smashingmylimits.com/), and why Novartis is now turning its attention to something that might seem very different from drug development: helping people with SMA actually get out into the world.

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