Industry Connections: Clinical Research, Intellectual Property, and Technology Transfer with Chris Loryman

The 2014 Industry Connections series will focus on perspectives from people working in industry and how they successfully transitioned to these positions.

The speaker will give a short presentation and then open the topic up for Q & A. Please be willing to participate in the discussion. This event is for a limited number of postdocs and a light lunch will be provided.

This month will feature Chris Loryman, Principal Contract Officer at UC San Diego, who will discuss "Options in the Life Sciences outside Academia, including Industry, Clinical Research, Intellectual Property, and Technology Transfer."

Speaker Bio

Chris Loryman is a Principal Contract Officer at UC San Diego, with delegated authority to negotiate and sign agreements on behalf of the Regents of the University of California. These agreements are typically researcher-initiated science projects and early-phase clinical trials, but also include collaborations, material transfers, and confidentiality agreements.

Initially trained in biochemistry, Chris worked in industry, and was part of the Smith & Nephew M&A team buying the assets of Advanced Tissue Sciences following their Chapter 11 filing. Moving to the United States he took charge of the Tissue Engineering Research Laboratory in La Jolla CA, leading development of several products and seminal publications. Moving into clinical research, he ran the 25-country, 500-patient, Phase 3b “MAXIMA” study for Roche, investigating Rituximab in Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Following this he moved into early-phase technology development at UCL Business PLC, the technology development company of University College London (one of the top ten universities in the world, by QS ranking). Over five years he built a pipeline of two Phase 2, one Phase 1, and two late-stage pre-clinical assets, an unusual achievement arising from an academic institution, and secured over $24.8million in translational research funding. In 2009 he founded ThioLogics, a biopharmaceutical company with a portfolio of antibody-drug conjugate technologies, but in 2012 family commitments brought him back to the United States, where he ran a successful consulting company, before joining UC San Diego in June 2013.