A charitable funder’s perspective on personalised medicine and the appropriate exploitation of IP
Chris Moran is a senior legal counsel at the Wellcome Trust, specialising in intellectual property. He began his career in private practice, at Bristows solicitors, primarily working on patent litigation matters. He then moved in-house and worked for 7 years at BP. At the Wellcome Trust, an independent charitable foundation existing to improve human health, he handles IP matters across the Trust. He is currently working on a refresh of Wellcome’s IP policy and a range of policy and funding initiatives to help researchers translate their research outputs into new products. Wellcome is a global charitable foundation, both politically and financially independent. We believe that good health makes life better and we want to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive. Our funding supports over 14,000 people in more than 70 countries. In the next five years, we aim to spend up to £5 billion helping thousands of curious, passionate people all over the world explore ideas in science, population health, medical innovation, the humanities and social sciences and public engagement. Whilst much of our funded research is of a pre-commercial, fundamental nature, we also provide significant funding to support IP creation and its translation into products delivering health benefits. Under our new Innovation for Impact strategy we will provide up to £500 million over the next five years to help researchers and organisations from around the world to turn great ideas, discoveries and inventions into treatments, products and cures for disease. As a charitable organisation we have an obligation to ensure that the results from our funded research, including IP, are used for public benefit. This talk will consider how such public benefit can be delivered by personalised medicine and how IP (together with an appropriate commercialisation strategy) can serve as a tool to help achieve this goal.