Supercharging Innovation

In this second series, our expert guests will explore how the UK must break down barriers to solve national and global challenges and how this can be realised through the power of science, innovation and technology.

Episode four investigates the evolution of UK healthcare. Our panellists discuss UK leadership, common barriers to translation and adoption of health innovation and how the UK 'moves the dial' from treatment to prevention. Learn more by listening to this episode of the Supercharging Innovation podcast.

Hear from our panel of experts, including Prof. Chris Molloy, CEO of Medicines Discovery Catapult, Dr Jacqueline Barry, Chief Clinical Officer at Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, Dr Arun Harish, Chief Strategy Officer at CPI, part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and our special guest, Prof. Dame Anna Dominiczak, Chief Scientist for the Scottish Government and Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Glasgow.

Hear from our panel of experts, including Prof. Chris Molloy, CEO of Medicines Discovery Catapult, Dr Jacqueline Barry, Chief Clinical Officer at Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, Dr Arun Harish, Chief Strategy Officer at CPI, part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and our special guest, Prof. Dame Anna Dominiczak, Chief Scientist for the Scottish Government and Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Glasgow.

Learn more about our panellists here:

• Prof. Chris Molloy, CEO of Medicines Discovery Catapult:
  Professor Chris Molloy has a 30-year international board and executive career across a unique range of life sciences R&D disciplines. His career began in preclinical research at Glaxo, where he was closely involved with the industrialisation of high throughput discovery. In 2004 he moved to Asia as COO of MerLion Pharmaceuticals, a Singaporean biotech that developed into an award-winning multinational anti-infectives R&D biotech. Chris then ran corporate development for the global informatics firm, idbs during which time it won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, became a Fast-track 100 company, and the first UK firm to develop a stratified medicine software platform using real-world health data. Chris spent three years as CEO of the RSA Group, the global life science executive search specialist before in 2016 becoming the founding CEO of Medicines Discovery Catapult; the national centre for innovation in drug discovery. During its first five years, under Chris’ leadership Medicines Discovery Catapult has leveraged its Innovate UK grant fourfold, worked with over 150 UK companies and assisted the discovery of UK drug assets worth over £1bn. During the pandemic, Chris was the founding Director of the UK Lighthouse Labs Network – the largest diagnostics project in UK history – and chaired the industry-governmental consortium that increased UK lateral flow manufacturing capacity by twenty-fold. Chris is the non-executive chairman of Exploristics and NorthWest EHealth: two UK tech companies using real-world healthcare data to improve clinical development. He chairs the IP Advisory Committee for the Association of Medical Research Charities and the Industry Advisory Board for Manchester’s Biomedical Research Centre & Health Innovation Manchester. Chris is a Member and Trustee of the Institute of Cancer Research and holds an honorary chair at the University of Manchester.
• Dr Jacqueline Barry, Chief Clinical Officer at Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult:
  Jacqueline joined Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult as Director of Regulatory Affairs and has since been promoted to Chief Clinical Officer. Prior to this, Jacqueline worked at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service in several senior regulatory and quality positions, the responsibility for which included designing the regulatory strategy for the Cellular Therapies developed by the Blood Transfusion Service acting as Responsible Person for Blood and Qualified Person for medicinal product release. Before that, she held a number of post-Doctoral academic posts at the University of Edinburgh, studying neuromuscular regeneration. She has considerable experience in the development, translation, clinical trial and approval of cell-based medicinal products and therapies.
• Dr Arun Harish, Chief Strategy Officer at CPI, part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult:
  As Chief Strategy Officer, Arun leads strategies for CPI’s sustainable growth and impact generation. Since joining CPI in 2008, Arun has held diverse roles spanning technology commercialisation, innovation consulting, fund-raising from private and public sources and business development. He has also shaped the development of CPI’s National Healthcare Photonics Centre and the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre. Prior to joining CPI, Arun worked with venture capital funded technology start-ups in the UK (Farfield Group) and India (Tejas Networks), where he held business development and R&D roles. Arun is passionate about the role of innovation centres in enabling economic and societal impact and supporting cluster formation. He is a thought leader on investment readiness for high-growth SMEs, and has acted as Co-Chair for the European Commission’s Independent Steering group on investment readiness linked with SME actions. Arun holds a PhD in medical nanotechnologies from the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University and an MBA from Warwick Business School, where he specialised in entrepreneurial finance and venture capital. Arun is the Founding Chair of a UK based charity UTSAAH (Uniting to Sustain and Assist Himalayan communities) which supports rural Himalayan communities in the areas of enterprise, conservation and healthcare.
• Prof. Dame Anna Dominiczak, Chief Scientist for the Scottish Government and Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Glasgow:
  Professor Dominiczak is a world-leading cardiovascular scientist and clinical academic. She has published extensively in top peer-reviewed journals (over 500 publications, an h-index of 118). Between 2010 and 2020 she was Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow. Anna developed a new clinical academic campus at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, where she led a triple helix partnership between academia, the NHS and industry to accelerate innovation, maximize patient benefits and economic growth. Dame Anna is a member of several editorial boards and, from 2012 -2022, was Editor-in-Chief of Hypertension, journal of the American Heart Association, currently she is Editor-in Chief of Precision Medicine, a new Prism journal of the Cambridge Press. In March 2020, Anna led the establishment of Lighthouse Laboratory in Glasgow to provide rapid Covid–19 diagnostics, and then was asked to become Director of Laboratories at the UK Department of Health and Social Care to lead all 10 Lighthouse Laboratories across the UK, the role she fulfilled until 2022. In July 2022 she was appointed as a Chief Scientist (Health) for the Scottish Government. She works with the Chief Scientist Office to formulate and implement research and innovation strategy with a focus on transformative innovations that improve the health of Scottish communities.

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