Professor Jeffrey Pollard Macomics’ co-founding board member and chair of its SAB elected to the Academia Europaea

Edinburgh and Cambridge, UK, 03 October 2022 - Macomics Ltd, a biotech company with world-leading expertise in macrophage biology, congratulates its co-founder Prof. Jeffery Pollard Ph.D. on his election to the Academia Europaea (the European Academy, AE).

Prof. Pollard will be welcomed as a new at a ceremony during the 33rd Annual Conference of Academia Europaea, Building Bridges 2022, in Barcelona 27-27 October.

The prestigious Academia Europaea has recognized Prof. Pollard for his visionary and pioneering work in the field of macrophage biology. He co-founded Macomics with Dr Luca Cassetta, as a spin out from Edinburgh University to develop precision medicines to modulate macrophages for the treatment of cancer. He now provides expert consultancy to the company, is a board member and also Chair of its Scientific Advisory Board, whilst Dr Cassetta has joined full time as VP Immunology.

Founded in 1988, Academia Europaea members include leading experts from the physical sciences and technology, biological sciences and medicine, mathematics, the letters and humanities, social and cognitive sciences, economics and the law. Its 4,500 members are drawn from across Europe as well as European scholars who are resident in other regions of the world. Current members include seventy-two Nobel Laureates, several of whom were elected to the Academia before they received the prize.

Membership is highly selected, through peer nomination, scrutiny, and confirmation as to the scholarship and eminence of the individual in their chosen field. Election is confirmed by the Council of the Academia. Prof. Pollard was elected based on his contribution to the foundation of knowledge on the role of macrophages in disease. He is a Member of the section Clinical & Veterinary Science.

Professor Pollard is also Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Biologists, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scottish academy) and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (British academy). He has received several awards most notably the American Cancer Society “Medal of Honour for Basic Science Research” for his studies in tumour immunology (2010), Rothschild Yvette–Meynet Curie award (2009), the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2013 – 2018) and the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (2013 – 2021). For many years he has been on the annual Highly Cited Researchers list from Clarivate, being in the top 0.001% and thus one of the most cited researchers in science.

Commenting on the achievement, Dr Steve Myatt, CEO of Macomics said: “I congratulate Jeff on being elected as a Member of Academia Europaea. It reflects the ground-breaking nature of his research over more than 30 years in the macrophage field, on which Macomics is built. Our vision is to deliver benefits to patients from this research and to continue to develop our position as a leading biotechnology company pioneering macrophage-based therapies for the treatment of cancer.”

Macomics is progressing a diversified portfolio of therapies targeting disease-specific tumour-associated macrophages (‘TAMs’) towards the clinic. Its target discovery platform enables the identification and validation of novel macrophage therapeutic targets and is based on its deep understanding of macrophage biology.