Lord Freeman Appointed as Chairman of BigDNA
Ltd
8 April 2008
Edinburgh based Big DNA Ltd, a spin out company launched
late last year to commercialise a patented new vaccine technology,
has appointed Lord Freeman as its chairman. Lord Freeman, formerly
Minister of State for Public Transport and Defence Procurement Minister,
has a proven track record in commercialising high technology and is
currently chair of Cambridge Enterprise Ltd, amongst other high technology
businesses, and was previously managing director of the international
investment bank, Lehman Brothers.
“This appointment is a huge vote of confidence for Big DNA Ltd and our technology. I am delighted that Lord Freeman has agreed to both chair our board and to personally invest in the business,“ says Dr John March, the CEO and founder of BigDNA Ltd. “His involvement in Big DNA Ltd, will help us get this cheap and effective new way of developing and delivering vaccines to market as soon as possible. This news comes on the back of significant additional funding to our company. Our patented technology has enormous potential importance for public health in the future.”
The unique process being developed by Dr. John March and his team uses bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) to deliver a vaccine. These contain the genetic instructions (or DNA) rather than using the disease organism itself, which conventional vaccines rely upon.
Conventional vaccines can be difficult and expensive to make, requiring specialist facilities and expertise, and sometimes fail to work for some diseases. Bacteriophage DNA vaccines offer the potential for extremely rapid development and manufacture, using relatively simple processes (weeks rather than months), important for pandemic influenza for example. In addition they offer the potential to be taken orally, eliminating the need for needles and injections and all their associated hazards. A range of vaccines are currently under development.
Big DNA Ltd is based at Roslin, Edinburgh www.bigdna.co.uk
Editors notes:
The need for new vaccines
Although vaccination has had many well-documented success stories,
there is still a pressing need for the development of new vaccines.
Even with diseases where a reliable vaccine is available, distribution
and costs issues mean that vaccines are not always used where they
are needed, as highlighted by the distribution of hepatitis B cases
world-wide. There is therefore a need for cheaper, more stable vaccines.
Another problem with traditional vaccines is the time it takes to
prepare vaccines against new and emerging threats, or new variants
of current diseases. This problem has been highlighted recently with
the threat of a pandemic H5N1 influenza outbreak. Influenza could
spread so rapidly that our ability to produce a vaccine against a
new variant would be outstripped. If this variant were highly pathogenic,
the death total could be potentially huge. The ability to produce
new vaccines rapidly could potentially be of great use in combating
such outbreaks. In the case of influenza, there is also the potential
to reduce the lag time which is currently a factor in producing the
annual seasonal vaccines. An ability to rapidly produce vaccine could
also have applications in protecting against potential bioterrorist
threats.
Vaccination
Despite recent controversies, vaccination is one the great success
stories of modern medicine, most notably with the eradication of smallpox
in 1977, which was estimated to have caused 300-500 million deaths
in the 20th century. Polio has also been almost completely eradicated,
with cases down from 350 000 per year before a global vaccination
campaign started in 1988 to less than 2000 in 2006, with most countries
world-wide being declared polio-free. Other once-common diseases such
as measles, diptheria, pertussis and rubella have seen a massive reduction
in cases since the introduction of vaccination campaigns and are nearing
eradication in many developed countries.
Lord Freeman
Lord Freeman is Chair of the UK Advisory Panel at Pricewaterhouse
Coopers, director of Thales SA France, and chairman of ThalesUKplc.
He is chairman of Metalysis (a Cambridge University spin-out), Chairman
of CrossCore Optimisation (An Imperial College London spin-out) Chairman
of Cambridge Enterprise Ltd (The Technology Transfer Office). Previously
he was a partner and managing director of Lehman Brothers, London
and New York from 1969 – 1986. From 1983 to 1997, he was Member of
the UK Parliament for Kettering, Northamptonshire, during which time
he held a number of senior ministerial appointments, including Minister
for State for Public Transport, Minister of State for Defence Procurement,
Cabinet Minister for Public Service, and Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster.
Lord Freeman was made a life peer in 1997.
He sat on the House of Lords Science and Technology Sub Committee, the Committee on Speakership and the Committee on European Union(Defence, Foreign Affairs and International Development). He also chairs the Select Committee on the European Internal Market.
Big DNA technology
The DNA vaccine is placed inside a bacterial virus, known as a bacteriophage
(or phage), with special genetic instructions so that the vaccinated
host can make the vaccine itself by reading this DNA. Thus the host,
or patient, actually makes the vaccine, rather than it being manufactured
externally.
Dr John March, chief executive, Big DNA Ltd
Dr John March is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He has
a BSc in Molecular Biology and a PhD in DNA Replication, and an MBA
from the University of Dundee. He has held many important research
positions including at the Dept of Molecular Biology at Edinburgh
University, the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, and Harvard Medical School,
Boston USA. He was a research fellow at the Centre for Genome Research
University of Edinburgh. Amongst very many professional memberships,
he sits on the review panel of DEFRA, Exotic Disease Research Programme.
He is an enterprise fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, and
an award winner of the Scottish Enterprise Proof of Concept Award.
He has published many papers on Bacteriophages and Biotechnology,
vaccines, gene therapy and antibacterials, and holds patents for Bacteriophage-mediated
immunisation.