Lab21 co-founder Dr Berwyn Clarke has been appointed a non-executive director with fellow Cambridge UK company ProteinLogic to help commercialise novel technology designed to fight TB.

ProteinLogic is a biomarker discovery and exploitation company. Dr Clarke joins the board with 25 years’ experience in diagnostics and pharmaceuticals working for start-ups and global businesses such as GlaxoWellcome and Bayer Diagnostics.

He is founder and chief scientific officer of Lab21, a rapidly growing healthcare diagnostics business, providing state-of-the-art diagnostic infectious disease products to blood-banks and clinical labs on a worldwide basis; molecular diagnostic products; and molecular diagnostic services in personalised medicine, mainly in oncology.

Dr Clarke played a leading role in taking Lab21 from a start-up in 2005 to a significant global player in diagnostic products and services today with service operations in Europe and North America and sales into over 130 countries.

ProteinLogic’s chairman Dr Paul Rodgers said: “I am delighted that Berwyn has joined the board where his business and diagnostics industry expertise will help commercialisation of the company’s ImmiPrint® biomarker technology.

“The board believes that Berwyn’s skills, knowledge and expertise will help progress the Company’s development plans to the next stage.”

ProteinLogic’s proprietary biomarker technology – ImmiPrint – with potential to diagnose and predict early onset of diseases and provide information as to how a disease is likely to develop and respond to particular drug treatments.

The technology is based on the profiling of a discreet subset of immune system proteins (sCD) found in the blood and other body fluids.

ProteinLogic’s development pipeline comprises 14 different ImmiPrint signatures in disease areas including infectious, inflammatory, autoimmune, oncology and metabolic diseases.

Following commercial analysis, the company has identified a significant unmet need for a simple, rapid, and inexpensive blood test that is capable of diagnosing tuberculosis. Early clinical studies indicate that the ImmiPrint TB signature may be able to discriminate between active and latent forms of TB.