John Padfield, previously a board director of Amersham and CEO of Chiroscience, is appointed to board of Akubio as chairman
Akubio, the acoustic detection technology company, has announced the appointment of John Padfield as chairman of its board.
Dr Padfield was previously a board director of Amersham and CEO of Chiroscience.
Commenting on his new position, Dr Padfield said: "Akubio has achieved a major breakthrough in molecular detection by developing acoustic technology that can detect the sounds that molecular bonds make when they break.
This technology has significant advantages over existing technologies with tremendous potential across many applications including in diagnostics, and pharmaceutical and life science research.
I look forward to working with the board and management team to achieve commercial success." Dr Padfield brings to Akubio extensive experience in both the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Currently he serves as a non executive director on several boards including Lorantis and Profile Therapeutics.
Over the last ten years he has gained extensive, global, public board-level experience: until December 2002 he was CEO of Amersham Health and a board director of FTSE 100 company Amersham; between 1998 and 2002 he was on the board of IntraBiotics Pharmaceuticals; and he served for five years as CEO of Chiroscience until its merger with Celltech in 1999.
Prior to this he held a variety of senior positions within Glaxo for over 15 years.
In addition to his commercial roles, Dr Padfield is a leading figure on public and industry bodies: presently he is a council member of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and he was a director and chairman of the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA) from 1995 to 1999.
With the addition of Dr Padfield Akubio's board consists of John Pritchard, CEO, Matthew Cooper, CSO, Stephen Bunting, Tim Rink, John Shields, David Klenerman, and Bill Matthews.
Welcoming Dr Padfield, Dr Pritchard said: "We are delighted to have attracted a chairman of Dr Padfield's calibre to Akubio.
This is an endorsement of Akubio's innovative technology.
His experience ranges from managing biotech companies through their early growth and public listing as well as running large businesses within major corporations.
We are confident that he will bring this experience to bear in steering Akubio."
