Alison Goodall

University Biochemist and Scientific Entrepreneur

Alison started out her academic life as a biochemist. After doing an undergraduate degree in biology, she did a PhD in biochemistry and then started to work with a group of immunologists at the Royal Free Hospital in London. 

She set up a hybridoma laboratory (Hybridoma cells are cells that have been engineered to produce a desired antibody in large amounts), and was funded by the British Technology Group to pursue this work for five years. Alison was involved in leading edge research developing monoclonals with potential commercial applications (Monoclonalsare antibodies that are identical because they were produced by one type of immune cell and are all clones of a single parent cell. This has become an important tool in biochemistry, molecular biology and medicine). 

So Alison was involved in commercial work quite early on in her academic career, however she later developed research in platelet biology and gained more mainstream academic funding. 

Since 1997 she has been based at Leicester University Medical School at Glenfield Hospital, with interests in thrombotic disease and clinical aspects and research into platelet biology.  When she arrived in Leicester she made contact with an old colleague and the two of them set up a biopharmaceutical company Haemostatix Ltd, in 2003.  The Company’s lead product is HaemoPlaxÔ, a synthetic alternative for platelet transfusion, used for managing major bleeding in cancer and surgical patients.

Alison is currently employed as a university professor and the university allows her 10% of her time to work on company business.  Her co-founder works as CEO of the company and she is Chief Scientific Officer. She explains that for both of them the motivation is to develop the product and to see it work and ‘to create the company out of nothing’.  Currently she is not involved in teaching at the university but is engaged in research and administration there. 

Although both Alison and her co-founder had experience of business and patents etc, she feels that the process of setting up Haemostatix has involved her increasing her knowledge of business – finding out ‘the rules of the game’. 

She also believes that they were very lucky to find a good chairman who has acted as business mentor.  Both the academic and commercial careers are important to Alison and she feels it would take a lot of thought for her to step completely over into the business.