Simon Best
Professor Simon Best, a leading life-science entrepreneur, was recently appointed to lead the commercialisation drive at Edinburgh’s BioQuarter, one of Scotland’s flagship projects. The BioQuarter is a partnership between Scottish Enterprise, Edinburgh University, NHS Lothian and Alexandria Real Estates Equities, the US-based life sciences property specialist. Prof Best will steer the project to try to ensure that a recently announced £12m ($20m) injection of funds boosts commercial activity at the university’s college of medicine and veterinary medicine, to help translate its world-leading research into new therapies for patients and products and services for the global life science industry. A serial entrepreneur, Prof Best has a track record in life sciences commercialisation, founding substantial ventures such as Zeneca Plant Science, Roslin Biomed and Ardana. Over a 15-year period, he has built a portfolio of both executive and non-executive roles with life sciences companies and investors around the world and helped raise more than £130m of funding in the sector.
