LIG Biowise announces three board appointments

LIG Biowise, an ultra-rapid point-of-care (POC) molecular diagnostics company, announced three board appointments that significantly bolster the medtech industry expertise available to the company.

Simon Hubbert joins LIG Biowise as Non-Executive Chairman, succeeding founder and Non-Executive Chairman of four years, Professor Lin Li, who remains a Non-Executive Director. Additionally, Meinhard Schmidt and Rajan Jethwa have been appointed as Non-Executive Directors.

All appointees join current Non-Executive Director, Dr Tao Wang, as the fifth board member. Appointments became effective on 15 January 2018.

Simon Hubbert has more than 25 years extensive experience within the medical device industry and has held various senior commercial and business roles in Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson.

Hubbert has previously served as CEO of Lombard Medical, leading $100 m in equity financing including a NASDAQ initial public offering and the acquisition of Altura Medical.

Meinhard Schmidt is a medtech industry executive and entrepreneur with more than 25 years broad international experience. He is currently active as an independent healthcare professional, providing advisory and board work in the diagnostics and biotech sectors.

Prior to this, he worked as an executive at Straumann Institute, responsible for the world-wide 'digitalisation' of the dental industry. Between 1998 and 2008, he was at Roche Diagnostics and held various global senior leadership roles in diabetes care and decentralised solutions.

He was also global Senior VP at Lab Diagnostics, during which time the company achieved a leading global position in the laboratory industry. He has held executive management positions in Germany, The Netherlands, US, Canada, Sweden, UK and Switzerland. He currently serves as Board Director at several diagnostic and biotech companies in the UK, US and Switzerland.

Rajan Jethwa is an internationally experienced CEO, a qualified surgeon and a former adviser to multi-national corporations and governments. Through roles in both venture capital and as a CEO of life science businesses including Virgin Health Bank and Ellipses Pharma, a UK-based company focused on the development of innovative cancer treatments, Rajan has extensive experience in building growth companies in biotech, medtech and life sciences across the globe.

Jethwa has a high level of knowledge in the clinical and commercial requirements for diagnostic technologies through his prior role as CEO of Microtest Matrices, a UK-based company focused on diagnostic testing that helps clinicians manage patients’ allergies more effectively.

LIG Biowise’s platform technology is an ultra-rapid POC diagnostic that tests for infectious diseases. Its novel technique combines DNA extraction, amplification and detection into a single step, resulting in faster diagnostic turn around, lower costs and higher precision.

LIG Biowise is initially targeting upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs), with the intention to expand its technology across multiple areas of infectious disease diagnosis at the POC in both primary and secondary care.

By offering a rapid, easy to use method for detecting infectious diseases, LIG Biowise’s technology can significantly reduce the time and costs of diagnosis by moving it from the lab bench to the POC in both primary and secondary care settings.

Alex Sheppard, General Manager of LIG Biowise, said: “These three appointments mark a significant milestone in our evolution as a diagnostics company. We believe that our proprietary molecular diagnostics technology offers the potential to transform the diagnosis and prescribing practice for the treatment of infectious disease, both in primary and secondary care.”

“Our ability to attract such high calibre and experienced individuals to our Board is an endorsement of this potential and I look forward to working closely with Simon, Meinhard and Rajan.”

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