Sarah Hennebry

Sarah specialises in patent matters for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.

Prior to joining FPA, Sarah completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne, where she elucidated the structure and function of a novel protein associated with bacterial pathogenesis. This included work in diverse fields including bioinformatics, protein structure and function, microbiology and infectious diseases.

Following her PhD, Sarah completed 3 years of post-doctoral research at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. Her work there included the identification of biomarkers and investigation of molecular pathways associated with sympathetic nervous system activation in the context of neuropsychiatric disorders and chronic renal, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

It’s this experience that Sarah draws on in her practice today, where she works with a diverse range of clients, including universities and research institutes, at various stages of the business cycle, including identification and capture of early-stage innovations.

Sarah establishes a deep understanding of her clients’ inventions and commercial needs in order to streamline and manage their patent portfolios across multiple jurisdictions. She also has experience managing complex patent portfolios across the US, Europe, Southeast Asia and South America for larger corporations.

Sarah routinely provides advice to investors and industry stakeholders as part of due diligence reviews of patent portfolios, including preparing detailed freedom to operate and validity opinions.

Sarah’s specific areas of technical expertise include:

• antibodies and therapeutic proteins for use in a variety of applications including oncology and treatment of inflammatory disorders;
• in vitro diagnostics;
• small molecule pharmaceuticals for use in treating disorders of the renal/cardiovascular system;
• infectious diseases and vaccines for the prevention of infectious diseases;
• genome technologies; and
• agrigenetics.