Global Health
Commercialization and Funding Roundtable

April 19-20, 2012

The first Cambridge Global Health Commercialization & Funding Roundtable happened at IfM April 19-20, 2012. As a top-ranked research university, we annually generate numerous biomedical innovations each year from our interdisciplinary life science, clinical and engineering departments. But are our biomedical innovations reaching the poor? Helping those who live at the bottom of the global income pyramid?

The aim of this high-level roundtable meeting was to explore business models for entrepreneurs, innovators and the private sector to help discover, develop and deliver innovations in global health. This was done by convening scientists, entrepreneurs academics, investors and funders to engage in lively discussion and brainstorming in panel formats. This inaugural exploration concentrated on one of the major diseases emphasized by the Millennium Development Goals: Tuberculosis.

Thursday’s Keynote Lecture was delivered by Dr. Ellen Strahlman, Senior Vice-President, Office of the CEO and Global Head of Neglected Tropical Diseases Unit at GlaxoSmithKline. The talk was titled “Doing Well by Doing Good: The contribution of the pharmaceutical industry to Global Health. The podcast of this keynote lecture can be found here: [http://upload.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1249012].

Friday’s Roundtable conference day was structured as 5 expert sessions on funding and commercialization of global health innovations. The programme of the day and speaker bios of the 33 speakers can be found here: [PDF file (468k)].

Introduction

Podcast here [http://upload.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1249028]

This is the opening introduction to the first Cambridge Global Health Commercialization & Roundtable open-day conference April 20, 2012.

Panel I: Global Health Funding: Grants and Investments

Podcast here [http://upload.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1249042]

This was the first panel of the Cambridge Global Health Commercialization & Roundtable open-day conference April 20, 2012. This panel focused on global health funding via grants and investments. Panelists are:

• Moderator: Christopher Egerton-Warburton, Partner, Lion’s Head Capital Partners
• Vinay Nair, Business Development – Europe, Acumen Fund
• Sev Vettivetpillai, CEO, Aureos Advisers Ltd
• Bina Rawal, Head of Clinical Development, Wellcome Trust
• Kim Tan, Chairman, SpringHill Management Ltd,
• Mark Braganza, Principal, TPG Biotech LLP

Panel II: TB Overview and Social Entrepreneurship in TB DOTS Delivery

Podcast here [http://upload.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1249051]

This panel focused on TB overview and social entrepreneurship in TB DOTS delivery Panelists are:

• Moderator: David Brown, Adviser, One World Health
• Christopher Dye, Director of Health Information in the Office of HIVAIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases, World Health Organization
• Shelly Batra, President, Operation ASHA
• Urvashi Prasad, Program Officer, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

Panel III: New TB Vaccines

Podcast here [http://upload.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1249074]

This panel focused on innovation in TB vaccines.

• Moderator: Ann Ginsberg, Vice President of Scientific Affairs, AERAS
• Adam Stoten, Deputy General Manager, Oxford Emergent Tuberculosis Consortium (OETC)
• Zhongming Li, Founder and CEO, Shanghai H&G Biotechnology
• Suresh Jadhav, Executive Director, Serum Institute of India Ltd

Panel IV: New TB Drugs

Podcast here [http://upload.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1249083]

This panel focused on innovation in new TB drug discovery.

• Moderator: Richard Jennings, Deputy Director, Cambridge Enterprise
• Chris Abell, Professor of Biological Chemistry, Unviersity of Cambridge
• Geoff Coxon, Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry, University of Strathcylde/Tuberculosis Drug Discovery UK
• Barry Furr, Llangarth Ltd, former Chief Scientist of AstraZeneca

Panel V: TB Diagnostics

Podcast here [http://upload.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1249092]

This panel focused on innovation in new TB diagnostics.

• Moderator: Bill Rodriguez, CEO, Daktari Diagnostics
• Steven Nelson, Vice President Business Development, Cepheid
• Romain Prieur, Senior Manager for Tuberculosis, Cepheid
• Laskshmi Sundaram, Advocacy Officer, Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND)
• Chandy Nair, CEO Director & CEO, bigtec Labs/Molbio Diagnostics
• Ruth McNerney, Senior Lecturer, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Thank you to all the speakers and to the 100+ Roundtable participants across the two days who shared their knowledge, questions and skills. An executive summary of the themes discussed in the five panels can be found here: [PDF file (788k)]

Two special additions to the GHCF Roundtable:

• A graphic visual artist who captured the conference proceedings on a wall mural. This interactive mural provided immediate feedback to the Roundtable participants and is a visual record of the Roundtable. Visualization can be found here: [PDF file (5.5Mb)]
• A spoken-word poet wrote an original poem for the GHCF Roundtable and performed it as a summary to our Roundtable. Her performance of the official poem capturing the themes of entrepreneurship, innovation and partnerships can be listened to via podcast here. To read her poem, please see the last page of the executive summary file.

We thank the EPSRC Enterprise Funds for making this conference possible and we are proud to be part of Cambridge Humanitarian Centre’s Year on Global Health.