Melanie Lee

Melanie Georgina Lee (born 29 July 1958)[1] is an English pharmaceutical industry executive and CEO of LifeArc, succeeding Dave Tapolczay in November 2018.

Career

Research
"Paul and Melanie's paper started a revolution in cell cycle research."

Kathleen Weston[2]

Lee received an undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of York, working with Simon Hardy,[3] and then a PhD at National Institute for Medical Research in London.[4]

Lee worked as a molecular genetics postdoc, first at Imperial College London on yeast and then from 1985 with Paul Nurse at the ICRF's Lincoln's Inn Laboratories.[2] Nurse's work on the cell cycle won him the Nobel Prize, and in his speech he cited Lee's work on finding a human homologue of the yeast gene cdc2.[5] Nurse said of this work that "I suppose the most astonishing thing was the way Melanie Lee in the lab did it by complementation."[6] Lee later recounted being uncomfortable with the competition in the laboratory.[4]

In 2003, she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.[7]

Works
  • Lee, Melanie G.; Nurse, Paul (7 May 1987). "Complementation used to clone a human homologue of the fission yeast cell cycle control gene cdc2". Nature. 327 (6117): 31–5. Bibcode:1987Natur.327...31L. doi:10.1038/327031a0. PMID 3553962.

Business

Lee was appointed Chief Executive Officer of LifeArc in November 2018.[8] Lee currently serves on the Board of Directors at Sanofi and on the Board of Trustees at the Dementia Research Institute. Previously, she was Chief Scientific Officer of BGT Plc and was the founder and CEO of NightstaRx, a Syncona, Wellcome Trust company in 2014.[9]

She began her pharmaceutical industry career at Glaxo in 1988, leaving academia after she became pregnant. She joined Celltech in 1998 where she was Director of R&D.[10] She held the same role at UCB Pharmaceuticals and was CEO of Syntaxin Ltd from 2010 to 2013.[4][11][12] She had Chair and Deputy Chair Trustee appointments at Cancer Research Technology and Cancer Research UK respectively. She was on the board of Lundbeck[1] and founded the Think10 business advice company.[13]

She was an advisor to the 2014–15 Dowling Review of business-university research collaborations.[14]

Recognition

In January 2019, Lee was awarded the BIA Lifetime Achievement Award[15]. She received a CBE in 2009 in respect of her for services to medical science[16][17] and in 2014, she was named as one of the top 100 "leading practising scientists" in the UK by the Science Council.[18]

Personal life

She is married to Christopher, with whom she lives in London. They have two sons.[4]

gollark: Hey everyone™! Please send me money and I might maybe send you more monkey. Accepted currency: bananos, US dollars, British pound sterling, melons.
gollark: Oh, that could be fun.
gollark: Ah, I see.
gollark: I don't really... *do* formal English in practice... so I'm not sure.
gollark: I mean, you would probably still say "sir" excessively.

References
  1. "Notice of Annual General Meeting". Lundbeck. 1 March 2012. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  2. Weston, Kathleen. "6: Divide and Rule". Blue Skies and Bench Space. Cancer Research UK. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  3. "Honour for University of York plant biologist". University of York. 2 January 2009. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  4. Cahoon, Lauren (26 September 2008). "From Watching 'The Expert' to Becoming An Expert". Science Magazine. doi:10.1126/science.caredit.a0800142. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  5. Nurse, Paul (2007). "The discovery of cdc2 as the key regulator of the cell cycle". Cells. Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  6. Smith, Jim (March 2009). "The cell cycle and beyond: an interview with Paul Nurse". Disease Models & Mechanisms. 2 (3–4): 113–5. doi:10.1242/dmm.002592. PMC 2650208. PMID 19259383.
  7. Dr Melanie Lee CBE FMedSci, Academy of Medical Sciences. Retrieved 4 March 2014
  8. "LifeArc announces new CEO appointment". LifeArc. 4 September 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2019.
  9. "Melanie Lee". Life Science Integrates. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  10. "Melanie G. Lee CBE, PhD, FMedSci, DSc (Hons)". BloombergBusiness. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  11. "Dr Melanie Lee CBE FMedSci". The Academy of Medical Sciences. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  12. "Melanie Lee becomes CEO of Syntaxin". MedNous. Evernow Publishing. 8 February 2010. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  13. "About us". Think10. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  14. "Dowling Review Group". Royal Academy of Engineering. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  15. BIA. "Melanie Lee CBE | BIA Lifetime Achievement Award Winner 2019". www.bioindustry.org. Retrieved 30 March 2019.
  16. Dr. Melanie Lee, Chairman of CRT, is awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), Cancer Research Technology. Retrieved 4 March 2014
  17. "New Year honours list: DBEs and CBEs". The Guardian. 31 December 2008. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  18. "The UK's 100 leading practising scientists". Times Higher Education. 17 January 2014. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
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