PredictImmune has named Paul Kinnon as its CEO. Kinnon, a former Life Technologies VP, has spent most of the past decade running diagnostic businesses Transgenomic and ZyGEM.
Cambridge, U.K.-based PredictImmune is developing tools to help physicians predict the long-term prognosis of patients with immune-mediated diseases and thereby help them to choose the right treatment. PredictImmune has picked Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis as the first applications of its approach. If the tool works as hoped, PredictImmune will identify patients who are at risk of developing severe, relapsing forms of the diseases and will therefore benefit from early, aggressive treatment with biologics.
PredictImmune raised a £4.7 million ($6.2 million) series A round last year to support development of laboratory services and diagnostic kits on both sides of the Atlantic. In April, PredictImmune secured a further £4.3 million investment from the Wellcome Trust to assess the prognostic ability of its biomarker blood test in Crohn’s disease patients.
Kinnon will lead PredictImmune through the important period covered by the investments. PredictImmune handed Kinnon the responsibility on the strength of the leadership track record he has built up over the past 20 years.
Over that time, Kinnon held positions of increasing responsibility at a series of life science tools and technologies businesses. Kinnon first took up a CEO position in 2007 when DNA product company ZyGEM put him in charge. More recently, Kinnon served as CEO of genetic test company Transgenomic.
Kinnon will now apply his experience to the development and commercialization of PredictImmune’s products.
“This is an exciting time for PredictImmune and I’m honored to have been appointed to lead the company as it enters the commercialisation phase of its expansion,” Kinnon said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the highly qualified and experienced team at PredictImmune to implement the global commercialization of its unique and revolutionary products to market and increase the company’s potential long-term value.”
Kinnon is working out of PredictImmune’s U.K. headquarters at The Babraham Research Campus, starting immediately.