Clinical Research Associate

Precision for Medicine has appointed laboratory industry veteran Chris Clendening as General Manager, Labs Translational Sciences. Reporting to President Sofia Baig, Clendening will oversee Precision's global specialty labs business, including operational delivery, growth strategy, and AI-driven approaches to accelerate biomarker research. Clendening most recently served as Senior Vice President of Biotechnology Operations and Product Development at Clario. He previously spent over a decade in executive leadership at PPD Central Labs, where he developed an evolutionary central laboratory platform that earned him the CenterWatch Award for Innovation. In his new role, Clendening will focus on global operational delivery and developing integrated scientific solutions for Precision's clients worldwide. He holds a Bachelor of Science in biology and chemistry from Muskingum University and is based in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Precision for Medicine has appointed Paz Vellanki, MD, PhD, as Vice President of Clinical Development, Oncology. Dr Vellanki previously served as Associate Director of the Division of Oncology 2 at the FDA, overseeing drug development for lung cancer, head and neck cancer and rare tumours. Her appointment completes a trio of former FDA oncology leaders at the company, joining Chief Medical Officer Harpreet Singh and Vice President Nicholas Richardson. During nearly seven years at the FDA, Dr Vellanki led the technical guidance on circulating tumour DNA for early-stage solid tumours and served on the Project Endpoint Working Group. The biomarker-driven clinical research organisation, part of Precision Medicine Group, operates across 40 locations globally with 3,500 staff.

RETECH-Madrid Community helps connect innovation with the real needs of the healthcare system. We interviewed the co-founders of eB2, best solution in the RETECH-Madrid Community health challenge. eB2 is a health startup that develops tools and solutions for patient care and monitoring using Artificial Intelligence and mobile technologies. eB2 is a platform applied to mental health, certified as a medical device, that allows continuous monitoring of patient behavior and transforms it into objective clinical indicators. The company has been recognized as the best solution for the health challenge defined by the company Precision for Medicine, at the II Innovation Forum of the RETECH-Madrid Community project. The meeting brought together over 50 ecosystem actors including startups, scaleups, and leading companies in Greentech, Health, and Aerospace at the SID building in Tres Cantos, with the aim of fostering business collaboration and addressing the real challenges of these three strategic sectors through technological solutions. We spoke with Ana Hernando Abascal, co-founder and CEO, and Antonio Artés Rodríguez, co-founder and CSO of Evidence-Based Behavior (eB2) about their startup's goals and their experience in the Digital Entrepreneurship Networks project in the Madrid Community. How would you define your solution in the health field and what needs does it address? eB2 (Evidence-Based Behavior) is an artificial intelligence platform applied to mental health, certified as a medical device, that allows continuous monitoring of patient behavior and transforms it into objective clinical indicators. It addresses a key need of the healthcare system: moving from a reactive model, based on occasional visits, to a preventive model capable of early detection of clinical deterioration. Today, professionals lack continuous and objective tools to anticipate relapses or crises. Our solution acts as a clinical co-pilot, helping professionals make more informed decisions and intervene earlier, improving care quality and system efficiency. Additionally, the platform is also used in clinical and academic research, enabling the generation of scientific evidence and development of new digital biomarkers based on longitudinal data. What does it mean for you to have been selected as the winner among the health startups participating in the II Innovation Forum? It is a very important recognition, especially because it comes from the public-private ecosystem and leading companies in the sector. For us, it validates three things: the relevance of the problem we address, the maturity of our solution, and its real applicability in both clinical and research settings. Furthermore, it represents an opportunity to accelerate collaborations with organizations and advance towards broader implementation in the health system. What are your main business objectives in the short and medium term? In the short term, our goal is to consolidate deployments in hospitals and mental health provider centers and expand the use of the platform in different clinical cases, strengthening impact evidence. We also want to continue promoting its use in clinical and academic research, generating new predictive models and scientific evidence. In the medium term, we aim to scale in Europe, advance in certification as a higher-level medical device, and position ourselves as a standard in mental health monitoring and prediction. What learnings would you highlight from your participation in the innovation forum? The main learning has been the importance of the real fit between problem and solution from the perspective of leading companies. The forum allows rapid validation of what is a priority for the healthcare system: integration, scalability, clinical evidence, and real implementation capacity. I would also highlight the value of the open innovation format, which facilitates very concrete conversations aimed at collaboration in both care and research. What do you consider being part of the startup and innovation ecosystem of the Madrid Community has contributed to you? The Madrid Community has a very strong ecosystem in health, research, and technology, and for us it has been key in our development. eB2 was born as a spin-off from Carlos III University of Madrid, and growing within this environment has allowed us to combine high-level research with real clinical application. Being part of this ecosystem has facilitated collaboration with hospitals, research centers, and other key actors, accelerating both development and clinical and scientific validation of the technology. Additionally, initiatives like RETECH-Madrid Community help connect innovation with real needs of the healthcare system, which is essential for bringing solutions like ours to market. Looking ahead, what milestones or key developments do you expect to achieve? Our next milestones are focused on three areas: First, expanding deployments in health systems and demonstrating impact at large scale. Second, advancing regulatory certification and clinical validation in new use cases. And third, continuing to develop artificial intelligence capabilities and evidence generation through clinical research. Our goal is to contribute to a paradigm shift: a more preventive, personalized, and data-driven mental health. Digital Entrepreneurship Networks. Digital Entrepreneurship Networks in the Madrid Community is a project led by the Madrid Community, through the Ministry of Digitalization, within the framework of the RETECH project (Territorial Networks of Technological Specialization) and funded by European NextGenerationEU funds under the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan. Investment Guide 2025 National report on tech and innovative companies.