Owlstone Medical, a global diagnostics company developing a breathalyser for early disease detection and precision medicine, has added Dr Andy Richards CBE to its board as a non-executive director.
Dr Richards is a serial entrepreneur and business angel with an established track record in founding and scaling up innovative Biotech and Healthtech companies in the UK.
His early career spans positions with ICI (now AstraZeneca) and PA Technology, and he was a founder and executive director of Chiroscience until its merger with Celltech in 1999. Since that time he has founded, invested in and helped to scale more than 25 innovative ventures including Vectura, Arakis and Cambridge Biotechnology. He received a CBE for services to life-science investment in 2015.
Dr Richards joins current Owlstone Medical board members Billy Boyle, CEO and executive chairman, Owlstone Medical; Dr Bret Bader, CEO Owlstone; Prof Chris Toumazou, Regius Professor of Engineering, chair in biomedical circuit design, director of the Centre for Bio-Inspired Technology, founder and Chief Scientist for the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College; and Dr Doug Wright Medical Director at Aviva UK Health.
Dr Andy Richards said: “Since its founding in 2016, Owlstone Medical’s development and growth have been remarkable. Given the potential of its Breath Biopsy platform to transform precision medicine and the early detection of disease I have no doubt that this will only continue, and I am very pleased to be able to play a part as the business scales.”
Billy Boyle, cofounder and CEO at Owlstone Medical, said: “Andy has been a good friend and advisor to Owlstone Medical for some time, and we are thrilled to be able to formalize our relationship and directly benefit at the board level from his deep experience in the development and growth of early-stage life science companies. Andy’s guidance will have a significant impact on the business as we seek to establish Breath Biopsy as a new industry category and to achieve our goal of saving 100,000 lives.”
