Management and Board
Management
Barrie Ward (Executive Chairman) Board member
Barrie Ward holds a BSc and PhD in microbial biochemistry from the University of Bath. From 1984-94 Barrie served as Director of the Microbiology Division of Glaxo Research and Development, with responsibility for infectious disease research. He was appointed Chairman and CEO of Virus Research Institute Inc., which in 1998 merged with T-Cell Sciences Inc. to form AVANT Immunotherapeutics Inc. In 1999 Barrie became Chief Executive Officer of KuDOS Pharmaceuticals Limited and served until January 2006 when the company was acquired by AstraZeneca. KuDOS was focused on the discovery and development of inhibitors of DNA repair as new treatments for cancer. Barrie is currently on the boards of Spirogen, Onyvax, Cancer Research Technology, Pharming Group N.V. and Biotica.
Will West (Chief Executive) Board member
Will completed his PhD in immunology and virology in 1992, sponsored by Unilever (UniPath). He held a post-doctoral position at the National Institute of Biological Standards and Control before joining Procter & Gamble Healthcare in 1994. He was responsible for clinical development in a number of therapeutic areas. He led an international team and delivered programmes throughout Europe, the Americas, South Africa and China. In 2001 he joined CellFactors plc, a tissue engineering biotechnology company in Cambridge, UK, where he was responsible for Product and Business Development. In 2004 he was recruited by Avlar BioVentures to help initiate CellCentric.
Will holds a Masters degree in Clinical Research as well as an MBA from London Business School. He sits on an advisory committee of the BioIndustry Association and is on the Research Steering Group of a Wellcome Trust-backed tissue engineering company. He is currently involved in the UK government’s review of bioscience through the New Ideas Working Group of the BIGT initiative. Will was appointed CEO in November 2005.
Tim Fell (Chief Operating Officer) Board member
Following his D.Phil in Semiconductor Materials Tim migrated to the biological sciences in 1992 to work with DNA microarray pioneer Prof Ed Southern at Oxford University. In 1999 he co-founded Oxford Gene Technology (Operations) Ltd where as Technical Director, and later as General Manager, he developed a DNA microarray fee-for-service business. In 2002 UK anti-infective drug discovery company Arrow Therapeutics Ltd acquired the business and he joined the management team as CTO. His last role was with the London Technology Network, which he joined in 2005 as a Technology Consultant with a remit to stimulate collaboration between global business and the academic research base in the South East of England. Tim has an MBA from the London Business School. He joined CellCentric in March 2006.
Nessa Carey (Director of Exploratory Research)
Nessa obtained a degree in Immunology from North East Surrey College of Technology and her PhD in Virology from the University of Edinburgh. Following a post-doctoral position in human neurogenetics at Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School she became a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology at Imperial College School of Medicine. In 2001 Nessa joined Vernalis in the days when it was a specialist neuroscience company, initially as Director of Molecular Biology and ultimately as Head of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology. In 2004 she moved into oncology and epigenetics drug discovery, becoming Head of Biology for TopoTarget before joining CellCentric in June 2006.
Dev Crease (Patent Counsel – Part-time)
Devanand Crease is a Chartered and European Patent Attorney and has worked in the life science field for over ten years. He has a PhD in Molecular and Developmental Biology from the University of Cambridge, where he worked in the laboratory of Sir John Gurdon - now part of the Gurdon Institute. Dev has represented established and emerging biotech and medical technology companies based in the UK, US and Asia, as well as private equity investors with interests in the UK and European biotechnology sector. As a result, Dev has gained valuable experience of a variety of IP and patent strategies adopted by a number of high profile bioscience companies. Since January 2004, Dev has headed the Bioscience Group at Keltie, and since September 2007 works part-time in-house at CellCentric.
Richard Brooks (Finance Director - Part-time)
Richard qualified as a chartered accountant in 1984 having trained with Ernst and Young (Edinburgh and London). After 8 years in industry Richard founded FD Solutions in 1993. It is now the market leader in the UK for the provision of part time Finance Director services and Richard manages around 50 staff providing finance director services to over 100 businesses. Richard is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience managing the finances of growing entrepreneurial businesses. Richard has a particular interest in technology businesses and systems development and implementation. Richard joined Cellcentric as part time Finance Director in July 2006.
Non-Executive Directors
Sue Foden
Sue is a Non-Executive Director for a number of public and private companies in the biotech and healthcare field including Vectura plc, Source Bioscience plc and Piramed Ltd. She sits on the Boards of two seed funds, The Rainbow Seed Fund and the University Challenge Seed Fund, Cascade Limited. On behalf of the European Investment Fund Sue sits on a drug discovery Investment Committee in Leuven and she is a Trustee of the Institute of Cancer Research. Prior to this, Sue spent time in venture capital with Merlin Biosciences, and in technology transfer with Cancer Research Campaign Technology Limited (now CRT) and Celltech. She holds an MA and DPhil in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford.
Dan Roach
Dan joined PA Consulting Group in 1985, becoming Business Development Manager for the Biotechnology Group. In 1993, he joined Advanced Technology Management Limited (ATM), a company established by Alan Goodman which has been involved in forming and seeding nine companies, seven of which subsequently listed on Stock Exchanges - Acambis, Chiroscience, CeNeS, Core, Lidco, Oxford Biomedica and Salix.
He was a co-founder of Peptide Therapeutics (now Acambis) in 1993 where he was Commercial Director, CeNeS in 1996 where he was CEO from 1997-2002, Amura in 1997 and Avlar in 1998. He is currently an investment director of Avlar, the ATM group of companies, and on the Board of several Avlar investment companies. He is Entrepreneur in Residence at the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning and to the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) Operating Board. Dan has been a board trustee of the Babraham Institute and Chairman of ERBI. He was one of the first students to read biochemistry at the University of Swansea and has a PhD in enzymology from Bath University, funded by Porton Down.
David Secher
David is the CEO of N8, the alliance of the eight research-intensive universities in Northern England. Prior to this appointment he was the Director of Research Services at the University of Cambridge, where he was responsible for technology transfer, research policy and for the management of the university’s research funds (£180m pa). His earlier experience includes R&D management in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical industries and clinical trial management at the Cancer Research Campaign. For 16 years he was an academic research scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he discovered and patented the first monoclonal antibody to interferon. He has advised many companies and individuals on commercialising intellectual property. Since 2001 he has been working with Lita Nelsen of MIT (thanks to Cambridge-MIT Institute funding) to bring best practice in technology transfer to the UK and in 2002 they founded “Praxis”, the UK University Technology Transfer Training Programme, of which he was Chairman until December 2005. David is a board member of UNICO and Praxis Courses Ltd.
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