Dr. Ian R. Catchpole is a GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Fellow in the Cell & Gene Therapy Discovery Platform at GSK Medicine’s Research Centre, Stevenage, Hertfordshire in United Kingdom, (UK). He grew up in Hertfordshire and won an Open Scholarship to attend St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, graduating with a BA (Hons) in Biochemistry and a D.Phil in Molecular Biology. He won a Wellcome Trust Travelling Fellowship for a Post Doctoral position at the Karolinska Institute to study homologous recombination in mouse ES cells. After his post-doctoral studies, he joined Glaxo Group Research, Greenford, UK initially in the Transgenics Unit. Dr. Catchpole has spent over 20 years at Glaxo, GlaxoWellcome and GSK as a successful senior scientist and project/people/matrix manager. He has managed scientific, business and strategic aspects of programmes within GSK, with academic and Biotech collaborators and has expertise and knowledge in a range of disease areas and technology approaches. His work on Biopharmaceutical and Gene therapy approaches to address retinal disorders and aspects of age-related macular degeneration have generated strong interest from the Ophthalmology field. He was recently appointed a GSK Fellow and a Fellow (FRSB) and is currently helping to establish a Cell and Gene Therapy platform at GSK. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-catchpole-4870007/ His largely industrial career includes 6 projects taken through to formal development at GSK or with collaborators, 16 published patents, (17 applications), 4 grants attracted from external & internal bodies, 2 technologies developed still in use at GSK. He was recently interviewed by the Medicine Maker on Advances in Ocular Delivery. He has 35 published papers and major meeting presentations. He won a coveted ARVO sash award in 2015 and has been an invited speaker at numerous meetings including SMi Controlled Release & InForm Europe (2015) and Targeting Ocular Disorders (Keynote Speaker, 2014). He has been a member of ARVO, EuRetina, ASBMB, ESGCT, ASGCT and BSGCT and a reviewer for PLOS ONE, Drug Design, Development & Therapy, Angiogenesis and Journal of Controlled Release

Focus on retinal disorders – especially dry and wet Age related Macular Degeneration, ocular delivery, controlled release, biopharmaceuticals and gene therapy.