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| SPEAKER |
| David Macauley |
| Chief Executive |
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Virgin Health Bank
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MEETING
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October 2008 |
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| BIOGRAPHY |
David Macauley is a qualified pharmaceutical chemist with extensive experience across a range of industries in the public and private sectors. In November 2007, David was named as one of The Observer newspaper's 'Future 500' UK rising stars. David is currently Chief Executive of Virgin Health Bank the UK-based umbilical cord blood stem cell bank, a joint venture between Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Merlin Biosciences. He is also Chairman of Aquados Limited, the leading 'green' laundry and dishwash products company, part of Sir Tom Hunter's West Coast Capital family. David began his career as a healthcare consultant with the World Bank in Zambia and after establishing Scottish Biomedical in 1994, a self-funded drug discovery company, he was appointed Scotland's first Drug 'Czar' in 1996 by the then Secretary of State.
In December 2004, Professor Sir Christopher Evans asked David to establish and lead the United Kingdom Stem Cell Foundation (UKSCF), an initiative backed by both the UK Prime Minster and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Foundation's mission, then as today, is to accelerate the development of stem cell therapies and regenerative medicine. David has successfully worked in the UK and internationally (USA, Middle East and Southern Africa).
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| TALK |
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Planes, Trains and Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cells
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| DESCRIPTION |
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Two things we know about umbilical cord blood stem cells (UCBSC) - transplant surgeons desperately need more of them now and regenerative medicine will utilise them for autologous therapies in the near future. Yet in the UK this precious resource is more often than not discarded as medical waste. Why? Why is there professional opposition to UCBSC collection and storage? Is this just the typical British response, so often seen when new procedures are introduced? Remember the controversial introduction of egg-sharing schemes in 1992 to counter the shortage of donor eggs? Then it caused public outrage, now it's an HFEA-approved process backed by regulation. What changed? Evidence emerged in the form of peer-reviewed publications together with surveys of patient attitudes demonstrating that egg-sharing worked and worked well for all concerned. So why has Virgin entered this seemly fraught arena of cord blood banking and why do we think we can do it better?
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MEDIA
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Audio
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Flash Presentation
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