Industry

Text Box: Bill Harris spent 9 years (1978-87) with Inveresk Research International, Edinburgh, Scotland, initially as Head of In Vitro Toxicology and then introduced and was Head of Biotechnology. IRI Ltd are a contract research organisation providing safety testing facilites for new chemicals. He managed contracts with US. NCI, NIOSH, US Army as well as many European and USA companies. This was the exciting era of environmental toxicology with predictive mutagenicity and carcinogenicity testing of thousands of chemicals in widespread use in pharmaceutical, cosmetic, chemical and food industries and a lot of time was spent visiting and advising companies on the impact of results on their businesses. A broad knowledge of procedures and legal requirements for safety assessment of new drugs during product development programmes was obtained at this time.

Between 1980 and 1988 he was technical advisor for investments in biotechnology by Cogent Ltd, initially set up by Mr. A. J Gray financed by Legal and General and Commercial Union Assurance companies to fund high technology ventures. This pioneering investment group provided vital funding to projects at the stage between initial university research discovery and industrial product development. In 1987, Cogent Ltd acquired the monoclonal antibody manufacturing company, Bioscot Ltd., Edinburgh and he served as Research Director. He directed the expansion of the Companies’ business into provision of novel immunoassay technologies and products, and developed an ELISA based assay for the environmental monitoring of Legionella pneumophila, marketed by Boots Microcheck. A series of Autostat multiplex assays for autoimmune disease were also devised with Dr. M. Kerr, University of Dundee, and these are now produced and marketed by Cogent Diagnostics Ltd.

In 1987, he co-founded Scotgen Ltd. in Aberdeen, Scotland, in partnership with his University, and served as its Managing Director until its merger in 1992 to form Scotgen Biopharmaceuticals Inc. By 1992, Scotgen Ltd was one of the world's leading companies in antibody engineering and had carried out collaborative R&D programmes with 15 of the leading Biotechnology companies worldwide. In house R&D programmes focussed on the provision of therapeutics for treatments of infectious diseases such as respiratory syncyctial virus, cytomegalovirus, varicella zoster and rabies. The product to treat respiratory syncytial virus was licensed to Smith-Kline-Beecham. An anti-cancer programme was established with the Sloan Kettering Institute of Cancer Research and Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research, New York, and some products have entered clinical trials. Early research was instigated into
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Text Box: Industry