Technology Transfer Challenge Committee
The Technology Transfer Challenge Committee (TTCC) makes funding decisions on Translation Award proposals.
The TTCC considers each application along with a due diligence report that includes the detailed opinions of experts who have been consulted on the proposal.
It has a pool of independent members who have been selected to provide commercially aware advice across a broad range of life-science product areas and platform technologies.
The Committee meets twice a year.
Members
Dr Ted Bianco
Director, Technology Transfer, Wellcome Trust
Challenge Committee role: Chairman/Staff member
Dr Nick Booth
Director for Clinical Data Standards, Office of the Chief Clinical Officer, Department of Health
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Professor Marc Brown
Chief Scientific Officer of MedPharm and Professor of Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy, University of Hertfordshire
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Steve Chatfield
Senior Vice President, Strategic Investments, Emergent BioSolutions Inc
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Mike Claybourn
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Alan Hudson
Pharma Research Consultant
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Kevin Johnson
Partner, Index Ventures
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Walter Luyten
Chief Scientific Officer, PharmaDM
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Daniel Nelki
Head of Legal and Operations, Technology Transfer, Wellcome Trust
Challenge Committee role: Staff member
Dr Gerd Michel
Senior Technology Officer, Foundation of New Innovative Diagnostics (FIND)
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Jo Mountford
Lecturer & SNBTS Group Leader, University of Glasgow
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Jill Rasmussen
CNS consultant
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Bina Rawal
Head of Medical Affairs, Technology Transfer, Wellcome Trust
Challenge Committee role: Staff member
Professor Mervyn Singer
Professor of Intensive Care Medicine and Director of the Bloomsbury Institute of Intensive Care Medicine, University College London
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Malcolm Skingle
Director, European Academic Liaison, Global External Affairs, GlaxoSmithKline
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Richard Seabrook
Head of Business Development, Technology Transfer, Wellcome Trust
Challenge Committee role: Secretary
Professor Molly Stevens
Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine, Imperial College, London
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Tim Wells
Chief Scientific Officer, Medicines for Malaria Venture, Geneva
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Dr Karen Zinkewich-Peotti
Vice President Oncology Research, UCB
Challenge Committee role: Independent member
Biographies of the independent members
Dr Nick Booth has a dual role as both a primary care general practitioner (part-time) and Director for Clinical Data Standards in the Office of the Chief Clinical Officer in the Department of Health's Informatics Directorate (England). Nick has for many years been active in the world of medical information systems and electronic health records, having been a Director of the Sowerby Centre in Newcastle University (decision support, consultation dynamics, health record architectures), and Director of Health Informatics for BT Health. He has also had a long term interest in medical terminology, has worked on the design of Read codes and more recently on the Editorial Board and now Content Committee for SNOMED-CT (IHTSDO). He is a past chair of the British Computer Society's Primary Health Care Specialist Group.He is currently also Chair of the IHTSDO Primary Care Special interest Group, and a member of the RCGP Informatics Group.
Professor Marc Brown is a co-founder of MedPharm and Chief Scientific Officer. Professor Brown was recently appointed as Professor of Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy, University of Hertfordshire after spending nearly 15 years as an academic in the Pharmacy Department, King's College London (KCL).At KCL, he was previously, with Prof. Marriott, co-director of the Medicines Research and Development Centre. His research interests lie mainly in drug delivery to the skin nail and airways and he has 80 publications and ten patents describing his work. Prof. Brown has previously worked for Canadian drug delivery company Hyal as Director of Pharmaceutical and Analytical Development where he managed the development and approval of several topical formulations for the North American and European markets.
Dr Steve Chatfield is currently the Senior Vice President, Strategic Investments for Emergent BioSolutions Inc.In this role, he is responsible for Corporate Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions.Previously, Steve was Director of the Health Protection Agency Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response (CEPR), and manages its Porton Down site.Prior to his role at the HPA, he was CEO and President of Emergent Product Development UK Limited and Chief Scientific Officer of Emergent BioSolutions Inc. He has spent 30 years working in the field of vaccine research and development within Industry, previously working at Microscience Ltd, Medeva PLC, Evans Medical, Wellcome Biotechnology and the Wellcome Foundation. He has had a broad range of experience and responsibilities encompassing all phases of vaccine development, including research, process and analytical development, toxicology, GMP manufacture, regulatory submissions and clinical studies in both Europe and the US, including compilation and submission of MAA and BLA dossiers.He has published over 95 papers andseveral book chapters on vaccine R&D and is regular speaker at international vaccine meetings.
Dr Mike Claybourn's areas of expertise are in instrumentation and design, spectroscopy, signal processing and data analysis. He has 25 years experience in industry with a focus on advanced analytical technology platforms and their application. In addition to hardware, he has developed advanced data processing techniques for handling complex multidimensional data-sets, including image analysis. Dr Claybourn, currently at Horiba Scientific, has worked in a number of industry sectors including 10 years within the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr Alan Hudson is an innovative pharmaceutical scientist with a proven track record in drug discovery research, which has culminated in four products to date. Since October 1995, he has acted as Pharma Research Consultant to clients including Piramed, AIBS, Arrow, Medicines for Malaria Venture and the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (as Chair of Drug Discovery Research Screening Committee). After obtaining a BSc (Hons) in chemistry from the University of Salford, he obtained a PhD in chemistry from the University of Manchester followed by two years spent as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1970, Dr Hudson joined the Research Division of Wellcome Research Laboratories, where he rose to become Head of Anti-tumour Research (UK) and built a 50-strong team of scientists to pursue novel anticancer strategies. Alan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and has had more than 50 papers as well as 16 patents published.
Kevin Johnson is a Partner at Index Ventures working out of the London office. Prior to that he was CEO of PanGenetics, an antibody development company based in the Netherlands, and one of the Index Ventures portfolio. Kevin was one of the team at Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT), heading up research from 1994 onwards. In 1997 he was appointed to the Board, where he held the posts of Research Director and Chief Technology Officer. Kevin led both the development of CAT's platform technologies, and also their application to the discovery of a number of human antibodies currently in clinical development, including the first such drug, Humira™ to reach the market. He was also part of the management team that floated CAT on the London Stock Exchange (main market).
Dr Walter Luyten MD, PhD joined PharmaDM in January 2002 as Chief Scientific Officer. In 1990, after brief postdoctoral work in protein structure and X-ray crystallography, he joined Janssen Pharmaceutica (a wholly owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson) in Beerse, Belgium, as Research Scientist starting a Molecular Biology Group to clone and express human G-protein-coupled receptors for drug screening. Over the next decade he rose to the level of Executive Director and built the Group into a department of over 45 staff working on functional genomics, proteomics, (pharmaco)genetics, bioinformatics, (bio)technology assessment, etc. He was involved in initiating a number of collaborations with academic labs as well as with biotech companies (including Chiron, Algene, Genset, Neurocrine Biosciences, Rigel, Lexicon, Allelix, WITA, Aurora and Morphosys). He has published over 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is co-inventor on over 15 patents.
Dr Gerd Michel is Senior Technology Officer at the Foundation of New Innovative Diagnostics (FIND). He obtained his PhD from the University of Heidelberg, where he was head of the Cellular Signal Transduction and Receptor Research laboratory. He then became Head of Immunology Research at the Bieger Laboratories and Laboratory for Clinical Immunology in Munich. Dr Michel spent 18 years with Abbott's diagnostic division, rising to the post of Director of Medical and Scientific Development for EMEA, including responsibility for new technologies. Dr Michel has developed and/or launched 15 commercial in vitro diagnostic assays, contributed to over 160 peer-reviewed articles and is an inventor on nine patents. He holds fellowships from the University of Aarhus, the German Cancer Research Centre, the University of Chicago and the University of Würzburg. He has held a number of advisory posts, including most recently the WHO industrial liaison board on the '5 x 3' AIDS programme and the OECD advisory board on New Medicines/Diagnostics for Neglected Diseases.
Dr Jo Mountford joined the University of Glasgow in 2002 following a PhD in the biochemistry of myeloid differentiation from the University of Birmingham Medical School and subsequent posts in Strasbourg, Oxford (Research Fellow), Birmingham (Barling-Radcliffe Prize Research Fellow) and Memphis (Lemuel W Diggs Fellow in Experimental Hematology) concentrating on haemopoietic cell differentiation and manipulation.Since establishing her group in Glasgow Dr Mountford has made a number of significant advances in the area of human embryonic stem cells and is now able to generate CD34+ HSC and terminally differentiated blood cells at rates equal to that of any other lab in the world. Based on her work with both adult and embryonic stem cells Dr Mountford has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the Scottish Stem Cell Network and also as a Technical Consultant to the ITI LifeSciences Stem cell programme.
Dr Jill Rasmussen has over 20 years' experience within the fields of strategic drug development and medico-marketing, specialising in disorders of the central nervous system (CNS). She has been working as an independent CNS consultant for over ten years. Her areas of expertise include drug development, project management, life-cycle management and regulatory strategy. Clients have included venture capital providers such as Nomura, 3i, Johnson & Johnson and Merlin, as well as large pharmaceutical companies and smaller specialist organisations. Prior to setting up as an independent consultant, Dr Rasmussen had held the positions of Head of Clinical Neurology at the Wellcome Foundation, Head of Clinical Research at Lundbeck, Director of Medical and Scientific Affairs at SmithKline Beecham and Senior Medical Assessor at the Medicines Control Agency. She was also Director of the UK National Neuroscience Research Institute. Dr Rasmussen currently maintains a position in the National Health Service where she is a community specialist in psychiatry and neurology.
Professor Mervyn Singer is Professor of Intensive Care Medicine and Director of the Bloomsbury Institute of Intensive Care Medicine, University College London, UK. He qualified from St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, London, in 1981 and subsequently gained a doctoral thesis on haemodynamic monitoring using oesophageal Doppler. He has written numerous papers and reviews on aspects of intensive care and acute medicine, and has co-authored/edited several books, including the Oxford Textbook of Critical Care, Oxford Handbook of Critical Care and the ABC of Intensive Care. His research interests include sepsis, tissue oxygenation, infection and haemodynamic monitoring. He is Principal Investigator of an MRC Sepsis Cooperative based at UCL (the first such awarded to intensive care), and Principal Clinical Investigator of a large randomised multicentre study funded by the Department of Health evaluating pulmonary artery catheter use in UK intensive care.
Dr Malcolm Skingle is Director, European Academic Liaison, Global External Affairs, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). He has responsibility for research interactions and collaborations with universities and small biotechs, and is the GSK representative for the Structural Genomics Consortium.
Professor Molly Stevens joined Imperial College, London in 2004 after a Postdoctoral training in the field of tissue engineering with Professor Robert Langer in the Chemical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to this she graduated from Bath University with a first class honours degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and was then awarded a PhD in biophysical investigations of specific biomolecular interactions and single biomolecule mechanics from the Laboratory of Biophysics and Surface Analysis at the University of Nottingham (2000). In 2009 she was awarded the Jean Leray Award from the European Society for Biomaterials, in 2007 the prestigious Conference Science Medal from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and in 2005 the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Engineering. She has also recently been recognised by the TR100, a compilation of the top innovators, under the age of 35, who are transforming technology - and the world with their work. Her previous awards include the Ronald Belcher Memorial Lecture Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2000) and both the Janssen Prize and the UpJohn Prize for academic excellence and research.
Dr Tim Wells is Chief Scientific Officer of the Medicine for Malaria Venture (MMV), Geneva, Switzerland.Tim has brought to MMV his strong leadership skills and his expertise in product development, research strategy, management of research alliances and multiple therapeutic areas from infectious disease, through inflammation to neurology and reproductive health. An opinion leader and keynote speaker in basic science and drug discovery, with over 170 basic research papers published, Tim also has extensive industry experience having worked with Serono since 1998 and previously with the Glaxo and Smith, Kline & French. Tim holds a Ph.D in Chemistry from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in the UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Member of the Biomedical Society in the UK, and serves on several research Advisory Boards.
Dr Karen Zinkewich-Peotti is Vice President Oncology Research at UCB, a leading global biopharmaceutical company.She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Montréal, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Georgetown University. She joined Celltech in 1993 and worked on a number of antibody and small molecule projects. Dr. Zinkewich-Péotti joined Aventis (Paris) in 2000 and took on a number of roles there, ultimately with overall responsibility for Oncology Research. She returned to Celltech (now UCB) in 2002 to spearhead a new Oncology initiative, establishing a portfolio of antibody and small molecule projects.A biochemist and cell biologist by training, she has managed drug discovery along the value chain, from target identification and validation, through screening cascades, in vivo pharmacology and translation into the clinic.She has led research efforts that have resulted in four clinical compounds, with the most advanced, currently in Phase 2 trials.In 2009, due to strategic decisions, the UCB Oncology portfolio was partnered with Wilex.Wilex will develop up to five molecules, with UCB having the option to resume control of the assets following proof of concept studies. Karen drove the establishment of this partnership and currently manages the relationship. Dr Zinkewich-Peotti joined the Cancer Research Technologies UK (CRT) Scientific Advisory Board in 2005 and remains a member. She also coached the angiogenesis research group at Aventis, resulting in a European FP5 grant of > €1M for a 4 year project working with five leading academic groups.