Commenting on the appointment, Dr Peter Wrighton-Smith, CEO of Oxford Immunotec, said, “We are very excited that Pam has agreed to become Oxford Immunotec’s Chairman. She has a wealth of experience, both as a highly successful marketer and general manager in leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. This experience base will be extremely valuable to Oxford Immunotec as the Company expands the sales and marketing of its first launched product and goes on to develop a wide range of further applications for its novel T SPOT™ technology.”  

Dr Kirby began her career at Astra AB (now AstraZeneca), progressing quickly through a number of highly successful marketing positions, before becoming Managing Director of the UK and Ireland subsidiaries and becoming Vice President, Corporate Strategy, Marketing and Business Development in 1994. From there, she moved to be Commercial Director at British Biotech plc (now Vernalis) and then Director of Global Strategic Marketing and Business Development in the Pharmaceutical Division of Hoffman-La Roche Ltd. 

Most recently, Dr Kirby was CEO of Quintiles Transnational Corporation, a provider of integrated product development and commercial solutions to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Dr Kirby is currently a non-executive director of Smith and Nephew plc, Oscient Pharmaceuticals Corporation and T&F Informa plc. She has a BSc in Pharmacology and a PhD in Clinical Pharmacology.

Oxford Immunotec is an international clinical diagnostics company based near Oxford, UK. The Company develops and sells products based on its proprietary T SPOT™ technology.

T SPOT is a novel technology providing a simple and accurate way to study a person’s cellular immune response to an infection. It has a wide range of potential clinical diagnostics and clinical trials applications. Its first product, a new diagnostic test of TB infection, T SPOT-TB, was approved for use in Europe earlier this year and addresses a market of £600m. 

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Notes to Editors: 

Oxford Immunotec

Oxford Immunotec is a rapidly growing international clinical diagnostics company with headquarters near Oxford, UK. The Company develops and sells clinical diagnostic products based on its patented T SPOT™ technology. T SPOT is a novel platform technology that opens up new ways of diagnosing and monitoring infections by providing a simple and extremely accurate method of studying a person’s cellular immune response to an infection. T-SPOT technology can be applied to diagnose and monitor any major disease driven by a T-cell response.

Oxford Immunotec's first product is T SPOT-TB, a revolutionary new in vitro diagnostic test for tuberculosis infection, recently approved for sale in Europe. It is designed to replace the tuberculin skin test, currently the only test available for the diagnosis of TB infection. T SPOT-TB allows the reliable screening and early detection of TB infection and will bring TB testing to many new patient groups where the skin test gives poor or un-interpretable results. It offers a substantially more accurate and effective tool for controlling the spread of TB. The addressable market for T SPOT-TB is the 30m screening tests for TB currently given each year in the developed world.

For more information, see www.oxfordimmunotec.com.