Tony Hickson

Tony is the chief business officer for Cancer Research UK and Cancer Research Horizons. He leads the Commercial Partnerships team responsible for the commercialisation of IP from Cancer Resarch UK-funded projects, new start-up creation, licences and corporate alliances.

Prior to this Tony was the managing director of Imperial Innovations Ltd, responsible for intellectual property sourcing, licensing and spin-out creation for technologies arising from Imperial College London. Tony has sat on the Executive Committee of IP Group and spent five years as an executive director on the board of Touchstone Innovations PLC, an investment company listed on the London Stock Exchange investing in deep science projects from UK universities.

Tony acquired 15 years of commercial and business development experience in bioscience companies before joining Imperial Innovations Ltd, including including Wellcome Group R&D, Murex Biotech, Abbott Laboratories and Kalibrant Limited. He has acted as a board director or observer for a number of start-up companies including Polytherics (became Abzena - acquired), Catapult Therapy TCR (acquired), Zihipp (sold to Metsera as part of $290m transaction for GLP-1) and Precision Robotics. He was also instrumental in the creation and development of companies such as Thiakis (GLP-1 company sold to Wyeth/Pfizer in 2008), Respivert (sold to J&J in 2010), Circassia (listed on LSE in 2014, now Niox Group PLC), EMcision (sold to Boston Scientific in 2018) and Cell Medica (acquired by Athenex). 

Tony has sat on the IP boards of two European Institutes of Technology (Healthcare and Climate Change), sat on the BBSRC industry advisory panel for 2 years, was a board director of PraxisAuril/KEUK for 8 years and a board member of Cambridge Enterprise (Cambridge University) for 5 years. He is currently a director of Queen Mary Innovation (QMUL), a member of the Francis Crick Institute’s Translational Advisory Board, deputy chair of Cambridge Enterprise's Translational Innovation Fund and a member of the UK government's 'Connecting Capabilities' expert advisory group. He has a diploma in company direction (DipIOD) from the Institute of Directors and is a Certified Licensing Professional (CLP).