T HE LIMELIGH T
C
hristina DiArcangelo Puller
comes f rom an executive
background having worked
in drug development with some of
the biggest names in biotechnology
and pharmaceuticals. Her résumé
lists organizations like Pf izer,
Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca,
MedImmune and Biogen. Across
those multinational corporations, she
has earned 21 years of experience and
a world-class reputation.
Then her ‘traditional’ co-workers as
she calls them, made light of her
ambitions in medical cannabis and
CBD. That was three years ago, and
we bet they’re not laughing now.
“It’s a weird path. I transitioned into
the CBD space three years ago. It
was kind of by accident. I had been
paying attention to research and I had
seen stuff coming out of Israel and
Australia – not as much f rom the US
three years ago. Now we’ve started
to take a lead on research which is
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fantastic, but three years ago, it really
wasn’t something you talked about.
My colleagues on the traditional
side made fun of me because they
thought I was crazy!
“I am a traditional biotech person who
wants to help patients and can see
there’s a value here and it needs to be
studied so we have to do research just
like in anything else.”
Christina’s extensive biopharma
background explored several drug
development projects, one of which
was Remicade, an antibody used to
treat a host of conditions.
“Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, paediatric
Crohn’s, Crohn’s, psoriatic arthritis,
pancreatic cancer… there were a
multitude of things we were developing
Remicade for, and so that was a really
excellent experience for me. Since then
I’ve worked on a lot of drugs and I’ve
seen a lot of the side effects.”
Four years ago, on October 13, 2015,
Christina’s father lost his battle with
cancer. In the year that followed,
Christina’s path changed as she not
only came to terms with his passing
but was inspired by it.
“I originally started Affi nity Patient
Advocacy as a cancer non-profi t to
help patients because my dad had
passed away from stage four liver
and stomach cancers. I became his
advocate. That was the silver lining in
a very negative situation. I knew he
was going to die. Leading up to it I
knew it was going to happen, I knew I
was going to have to try to fi gure out
a way to live without my dad. My son
was only 3-and-a-half at the time.”
It was at this point when Christina,
a confi dent public speaker, was
presented with a challenge – to make
a keynote speech from a personal
perspective for a local resource, rather
than her usual professional podium.
“It was very diffi cult for me. Most of the
time when I’m speaking at something,
it’s professional – I suit up – in this
instance for the fi rst time ever in my
career I was able to talk from my heart
about the struggles I had coping with
his passing.”