Synpromics Further Strengthens Board and Management Team

Edinburgh, UK, 19th April 2016 / Sciad Newswire / Synpromics is pleased to announce the appointment to the Board of Dr. John Shields as its new Investor Director. Dr. Ken Macnamara has been appointed to the Company’s expanded management team in the new role of Director of Operations, supporting ambitions for further growth.

Dr. Shields joins the Synpromics Board as a replacement for Alexandra Lindsay of Calculus Capital as Investor Director.  John is an experienced scientist, business executive and venture capital investor.  Following 11 years in academia, John joined Glaxo plc before moving to Cantab Pharmaceuticals where he was Senior VP, Research.  After 9 years at Cantab, he joined Abingworth LLP, a specialist healthcare and life sciences venture capital company, where he remained for 13 years.  For the last 2 years John has been an independent consultant and advisor to a number of venture capital groups, biotech companies and not-for-profit organisations. 

In addition, to support the scaling up of our operations, Synpromics is delighted to appoint Dr Ken Macnamara as Director of Operations.  Ken brings significant operational experience to the Management team having been pivotal in development of Lab901 (Scottish SME) where he was Product Development Manager responsible for developing the TapeStation and ScreenTape technologies from concept to market success.  After Lab901 was acquired by Agilent Technologies in 2011 Ken became R&D Director for the Microfluidics Business taking responsibility for setting the R&D strategy and leading the team through tremendous business growth. He brings a wealth of experience in business operations, financial planning, intellectual property, and quality/compliance from his experience of the journey from start-up to multinational.

Dr David Venables, CEO, said “We are very pleased to have another highly experienced executive appointed to our Board and welcome the contribution John will bring. We are anticipating continued strong growth in the business, and we have identified the strengthening of our operational infrastructure as key to our success. We are therefore delighted to have someone with Ken’s experience join the team and take on the role to develop and grow our operations.”

ENDS

About Synpromics

Synpromics is a privately backed synthetic biology company, based in Edinburgh, UK, focused on commercialising its proprietary technology in the emerging field of synthetic biology, one of the UK government’s eight great technologies. In August 2015, Synpromics announced a £2.1million investment round led by Calculus Capital, a specialist in Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) funds. Synpromics’ proprietary, patent pending, technology for the design and development of synthetic promoters gives biological researchers, developers and manufacturers unprecedented control of gene expression through the ability to create a comprehensive portfolio of man-made promoters, designed to regulate genes in a highly specific manner. These promoters have wide applicability across the biotechnology industry and, specifically in gene therapy products, enable the controlled expression of the gene of interest only in the target cell type and at the desired strength. Synpromics is also working on several other fields of use, including biotherapeutic protein production; DNA vaccines; enhanced functionality of cell therapies; improved efficiencies in industrial bioprocesses. For more information please visit http://www.synpromics.com.

For further enquiries please contact

Synpromics PR Contact:
Deborah Cockerill
Sciad Communications
Tel: +44 (0)20 3773 9580
Deborah@Sciad.com

Synpromics Corporate Contact:
Dr David Venables
Chief Executive Officer Synpromics Ltd
Tel: +44 (0)7825 323439
David.Venables@Synpromics.com