Dame Kate Bingham | |
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Born | Catherine Elizabeth Bingham 19 October 1965 London, England |
Alma mater | University of Oxford (MA) Harvard University (MBA) |
Occupation | Venture capitalist |
Spouse | |
Parents |
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Dame Catherine Elizabeth Bingham (born 19 October 1965 [1] ) is a British venture capitalist. [2] She is a managing partner at a venture capital firm, SV Health Investors. [3] In 2020, Bingham chaired the government's Vaccine Taskforce, steering procurement of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. [4]
Bingham was born in London, the only daughter of the barrister and judge Tom Bingham (later Lord Bingham of Cornhill) and Elizabeth ( née Loxley) and the eldest of their three children. [5] She attended St Paul's Girls' School, London, [6] before going on to study at the University of Oxford where she was an undergraduate student of Christ Church, Oxford. She graduated with a first-class MA in biochemistry . [7]
Bingham then pursued further studies at Harvard Business School, taking the degree of MBA. [8] She has an honorary doctorate from Imperial College London. [9]
Bingham worked in business development for Vertex Pharmaceuticals and consultants Monitor Company before joining Schroder Ventures in 1991 (now SV Health Investors). [10] [11] She became a managing partner specializing in biotechnology, and has served on the boards of companies in the UK, US, Ireland, Sweden and Germany.
As of January 2021 Bingham is listed as being a director of the following active companies: [2] Mestag Therapeutics Ltd; Cybele Therapeutics Ltd; Bicycle tx Ltd; Bicycle Therapeutics plc; Sitryx Therapeutics Ltd; Pulmocide Ltd; Autifony Therapeutics Ltd; Bicycle RD Ltd; SV Health Investors Ltd (whose subsidiaries include the Dementia Discovery Fund); [12] and SV Health Managers LLP.
She also serves on the boards of the Francis Crick Institute [10] and the British government's Advanced Research and Invention Agency. [13]
In May 2020 Bingham was appointed chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, without a competitive recruitment process. [14] The taskforce was set up to manage the path towards the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccine in the UK and its global distribution. [7] In this temporary unpaid role, [15] which finished at the end of the year, [15] she reported to the prime minister. [7] In October, she was one of the participants in a trial of a vaccine by Novavax. [16] Dame Kate's account of the risks, criticism and political interference she faced are discussed in her book The Long Shot which was published in October 2022 with all proceeds going to the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE). [17] In this she detailed the need for a specialist health communications capability to launch a national Vaccines Registry which was a core part of the vaccine procurement and development strategy and that this was contracted by the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy. [18] According to leaked documents seen by The Sunday Times , Bingham charged taxpayers £670,000 for a team of eight full-time consultants from London PR agency Admiral Associates. [19]
Dame Kate's work on the UK's vaccination rollout programme has been praised by scientists and international media, [20] [21] [22] [3] particularly for securing 350 million doses of six vaccines and setting up infrastructure for clinical trials, manufacturing and distribution. [3]
In 2016 Bingham received a Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bath. In January 2017 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the BioIndustry Association UK. [11]
She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2021 Birthday Honours for "services to the procurement, manufacture and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines", [23] [24] Bingham was also admitted to the Freedom of the City of London in that year. [25] She was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2023 [26] and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering later the same year. [27] She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences [28] and holds honorary fellowships from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine [29] and the British Pharmacological Society [30]
Bingham has expressed views on how the UK covid vaccination programme could have been better run, [31] and on how UK potential in life sciences could be improved. [32] [33] She published her account of the seven months she spent chairing the Vaccine Taskforce in her book The Long Shot, in which she shared lessons for future pandemics and offered advice on how government could work more successfully with industry. [34]
Bingham married Jesse Norman in 1992; the couple have two sons and a daughter. [35] Norman is a Conservative Party politician and a member of Parliament since 2010, who held various ministerial posts from 2016 to 2023. [36]
AstraZeneca plc (AZ) is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, England. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas including oncology, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, infection, neuroscience, respiratory, and inflammation. It was involved in developing the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is an independent expert advisory committee that advises United Kingdom health departments on immunisation, making recommendations concerning vaccination schedules and vaccine safety. It has a statutory role in England and Wales, and health departments in Scotland and Northern Ireland may choose to accept its advice.
Simon Laurence Stevens, Baron Stevens of Birmingham is Chair of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Chair of Cancer Research UK, Chair-designate of King's College London, and an independent member of the House of Lords. Stevens previously served as the eighth Chief Executive of NHS England from 2014 to 2021. Earlier in his career he worked in the Prime Minister's Office at 10 Downing Street, as well as internationally, including Guyana, Malawi, and the United States. He was a visiting professor at the London School of Economics from 2004 to 2008.
Dame Sarah Catherine Gilbert FRS is an English vaccinologist who is a Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech. She specialises in the development of vaccines against influenza and emerging viral pathogens. She led the development and testing of the universal flu vaccine, which underwent clinical trials in 2011.
Sir Jonathan Stafford Nguyen Van-Tam is a British physician specialising in influenza, including its epidemiology, transmission, vaccinology, antiviral drugs and pandemic preparedness.
The Vaccine Taskforce in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was set up in April 2020 by the Second Johnson ministry, in collaboration with Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance and Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty, in order to facilitate the path towards the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccine in the UK and its global distribution. The taskforce coordinated the research efforts of government with industry, academics and funding agencies in order to expedite vaccine development and deployment.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, numerous protests took place over the government's response.
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Wei Shen Lim is a consultant respiratory physician and honorary professor of medicine at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, England.
Dame June Munro Raine, is a British doctor who is currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the United Kingdom. Raine spent much of her career in the Medicines Division of the MHRA.
The COVID-19 vaccination programme in the United Kingdom is an ongoing mass immunisation campaign for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.
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Major General Phillip David Prosser CBE is a British Army officer and engineer, who currently serves as Director Joint Support, UK Strategic Command. He previously served in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, and was commander of 101 Logistic Brigade based in Aldershot. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prosser was head of the Army's Operation Iron Viper to help Britain's National Health Service administer vaccines against the coronavirus.
As of 12 August 2024, 13.53 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, with 70.6 percent of the global population having received at least one dose. While 4.19 million vaccines were then being administered daily, only 22.3 percent of people in low-income countries had received at least a first vaccine by September 2022, according to official reports from national health agencies, which are collated by Our World in Data.
The general COVID-19 vaccination in Australia program began on 22 February 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the goal of vaccinating all coerced people in Australia before 2022. Front-line workers and aged care staff and residents had priority for being inoculated, and were threatened with loss of jobs if they did not comply before a gradual phased release to less-vulnerable and lower-risk population groups throughout 2021. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approved four vaccines for Australian use in 2021: the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine on 25 January, the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine on 16 February, Janssen vaccine on 25 June and the Moderna vaccine on 9 August. Although approved for use, the Janssen vaccine was not included in the Australian vaccination program as of June 2021.
The COVID-19 vaccination programme in the Republic of Ireland is an ongoing mass immunisation campaign that began on 29 December 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland. Ireland's vaccination rollout has been praised as one of the most successful rollouts in the world and was ranked number one in the European Union in terms of its percentage of adult population fully vaccinated, and was also ranked number one in the EU for the number of booster vaccines administered.
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