Lionel Bascles began his career in academia and joined Sanofi in 1998. During his 20-year tenure, he has handled roles and responsibilities ranging from business development to international clinical trials to project management. Since 2010, Bascles has focused on building the pharma giant’s clinical sciences and operations platform.

Under his leadership, Sanofi became one of the first pharma companies to implement digital clinical trials. He was the catalyst for Sanofi’s partnership with TriNetX, an e-health record company that optimizes and simplifies clinical trial recruitment.

“Clinical trials are becoming ever more complex, and anything we can do to reduce the time and cost of a trial means therapies can be evaluated more rapidly and reach people faster. Working with companies such as TriNetX is an important way to do that,” Bascles said when the partnership was announced.

Bascles has championed remote/distributed clinical trials in an effort to expedite the development of medicines. He has also been a proponent of using AI to write clinical study reports.