New CEO for Nottingham life sciences firm
Nottingham life sciences firm PBD Biotech has appointed Jane Theaker, of precision medicine company Kinomica, as its new CEO.
The firm has also hired commercial director, Jonnie Yewdall, into a full-time role.
Worldwide, tuberculosis is only second to COVID-19 as the leading infectious killer, with 1.5 million people dying from TB in 2020. PBD Biotech is developing a diagnostic that identifies TB cells in a sample of blood from humans or other species, allowing early detection of the disease and the opportunity for preventing its transmission.
Theaker has a strong track record in precision medicine and novel diagnostics technologies. Her experience includes genomics with AstraZeneca and the co-invention of a new quantitative PCR technology. She headed up a team at Qiagen developing diagnostics kits to FDA standards before joining LGC as VP of R+D within genomics and establishing a precision medicine consultancy DataGC Solutions Ltd.
Tom Green, chairman of PBD Biotech, said: “We are delighted that Jane Theaker has agreed to join PBD as our new CEO. Jane comes to us from Kinomica and brings with her deep experience in diagnostics, leadership, and business development. We are fortunate to have secured Jane’s commitment and enthusiasm for PBD and look forward to working with her.”
Theaker said: “I’m absolutely thrilled to be joining PBD Biotech as CEO. The technology is acknowledged to be a potential game-changer for tuberculosis diagnosis in cattle and humans, allowing the spreaders of the disease to be accurately identified and appropriate action to be taken to protect the un-infected. In 2018 roughly 23% of the world’s population were infected by TB bacteria (CDC figures) so the need for this novel diagnostic technology is immense,”
Green added: “Jonnie Yewdall, who has been working on a part-time basis for PBD now becomes full-time and has joined the board as commercial director. We all welcome Jonnie to this new role.”
The outgoing CEO is Mark Hammond. Green said: “We all know how challenging the Covid period has been, we owe Mark a huge debt of gratitude for all the work and achievements of the past two years – these include the successful completion of last year’s fundraising and the progress which we have made both in the Bovine and early stages of Human applications for Actiphage. We wish him all the best in his new role.”
