Tony Hickson, currently the managing director of Imperial Innovations, will become chief business officer of Cancer Research UK in August.
Tony Hickson (pictured), managing director of Imperial Innovations, the tech transfer affiliate of Imperial College London, was appointed chief business officer of charity Cancer Research UK on Friday.
Hickson will take up his new position this August. He had been with Imperial Innovations for 16 years, joining the office in 2002.
During Hickson’s tenure, Imperial Innovations listed on the Aim stock exchange in 2006 and later rebranded to Touchstone Innovations in January 2017 – though the firm retained its original name for the unit responsible for tech transfer activities on behalf of Imperial College.
He was an executive director of Touchstone from 2013 until November 2017 and became a member of the executive committee of IP Group, after the commercialisation mounted a successful, hostile takeover of Touchstone last year.
During his time with Imperial Innovations, he was involved in the creation of spinouts with a combined value of more than £500m ($670m), such as allergy drug developer Circassia and oncological surgical robotics developer Precision Robotics.
He played an instrumental role in creating Founders Choice, a program that enables company founders from Imperial to retain 95% of equity in their spinouts, in August 2017.
Hickson was heavily involved in establishing the $57m Apollo Therapeutics Fund in 2016, which also involved UCL Business and Cambridge Enterprise, the respective tech transfer offices of University College London and University of Cambridge.
Apollo also attracted pharmaceutical firms AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson, the latter of which joined the consortium through corporate venturing subsidiary Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC.
Hickson said: “I am delighted to join Cancer Research UK at such an exciting time for the charity’s commercial development.
“I look forward to taking a lead role in the planned expansion of the charity’s commercialisation activity, building a hub for strategic research innovation, welcoming new partners and strengthening our relationships with industry.”
– Image courtesy of Imperial Innovations
