SAVE THE DATE
Rare Thinking
Challenging The Prevailing Paradigm
The Imperial Event Center
26 E Chestnut St., 17602 Lancaster, PA
October 22nd-23rd, 2026
A two-day educational conference that brings together practitioners, impact investors, and advocates to examine three linked problems: the regulatory path, the business model, and the assumptions of the dominant research and development paradigm.
The purpose is not to promote a single company or predetermined answer. It is to test practical alternatives, identify collaborations, and build knowledge that can travel to other diseases and communities.
The Summit at a Glance
Meet the Panelists
Dr. Kevin Strauss
Dr. Kevin A. Strauss is a physician-scientist who spent 25 years caring for children with rare genetic disorders, bringing rigorous science to local community care. Across more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, he helped define the mechanisms, clinical course, and treatment of several inherited metabolic and neuromuscular conditions—many arising from founder variants in Old Order Amish and Mennonite communities. In 2025, he founded Plowshare Therapies, a gene-therapy company powered by the community it serves. Plowshare unites Plain community investors, academic partners, and skilled drug developers to put therapies within reach of the people who need them.
Andrew W. Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, and a Principal Investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His healthcare research focuses on financial tools and business models for drug and device development, rare and ultra-rare diseases, patient-preference methods, machine-learning prediction of clinical-trial outcomes, and reimbursement models for gene and cell therapies. He co-founded BridgeBio Pharma, QLS Technologies, QLS Advisors, Quantile Health, TechTransferase, and Uncommon Cures, and serves on the boards of GCAR, n-Lorem, and Vesalius and the advisory board of the American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge Impact Fund. His honors include selection to the TIME 100 and teaching awards from Wharton and MIT. He earned a B.A. from Yale and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard.
Andrew W. Lo, PhD
Boro Dropulić holds a PhD from the University of Western Australia and an MBA from Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Following a Fogarty Fellowship at the NIH, he worked as a faculty member at JHU developing Lentiviral vectors for gene therapy. He founded ViRxSys, leading the team that first demonstrated the safety of Lentiviral vectors in humans. He later founded Lentigen, which developed the Lentiviral vector used for Kymriah®, the first FDA-approved gene therapy product. He spearheaded Lentigen's acquisition by Miltenyi Biotec in 2014, establishing a global hospital network for automated, place-of-care CAR-T cell manufacturing to improve affordability and accessibility. Boro is the co-founder and Executive Director of the non-profit Caring Cross, as well as the CEO of its spin-out public benefit corporation, Vector BioMed, which provides affordable GMP Lentiviral vector manufacturing services.
Boro Dropulić, PhD MBA
Kirsten Pier
Kirsten is a CMC professional with over 20 years of experience from research through commercial phase process development and manufacturing. She has managed internal and external process development and manufacturing groups and successfully scaled out these groups appropriately through each phase of development. She is a true problem solver and enjoys working in a team environment. She is especially passionate about rare disease drug development and the opportunity to help advance therapies for patients with unmet medical needs.
When Kirsten is not working, she enjoys traveling, practicing and teaching yoga, and spending time outdoors hiking in Eastern Washington with her 2 rescue dogs and husband.
Jennifer E. Adair, PhD
Jen is Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Genetic and Cellular Medicine and Associate Director of the Horae Gene Therapy Center at UMass Chan Medical School. She earned a B.S. in Chemistry (Youngstown State) and Ph.D. in Genetics and Cell Biology (Washington State), then studied preclinical translation (NIEHS) and gene therapy (Fred Hutch). In 2020, she co-founded the Global Gene Therapy Initiative to include diverse geographies in gene therapy development. In 2025 she joined UMass Chan to co-lead an academic department focused on gene therapy translation. Her lab develops safe and effective gene therapy delivery to blood cells.
Jennifer Panagoulias
Jennifer Panagoulias, RAC is the Head of Regulatory and Policy for the Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics (FAST ) and the Chief Operating Officer of FAST’s accelerator company, AS2 Bio. Jennifer has worked in drug development for over 25 years, primarily focused on advancing global development programs for the treatment of rare neurological diseases. She spent 16 years in Regulatory Affairs at Genzyme where she held various roles, including Global Therapeutic Head, Regulatory Affairs Neurology. At Genzyme, she supported global registration efforts for Myozyme, an enzyme replacement therapy for children and adults with Pompe disease. Jennifer has experience in working with global regulatory agencies including the US FDA, the European Medicines Agency, and the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Agency in Japan. Jennifer serves as co-Director of the Angelman Syndrome Biomarkers and Outcome Measures Consortium.