Adrian Rawcliffe has served as Chief Financial Officer at Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc since March 2015, and leads the company’s financial strategy and operations, as well as Investor Relations, corporate communications, global IT and facilities. He has 17 years of experience within the pharmaceutical industry and most recently served as Senior Vice President, Finance of GSK’s North American Pharmaceuticals business. Mr. Rawcliffe currently serves as a non-executive director of WAVE Life Sciences (NASDAQ: WVE). Mr. Rawcliffe joined GSK in 1998 and his other senior roles at the company included Senior Vice President Worldwide Business Development and R&D Finance, where he was responsible for all business development and finance activities for GSK’s Pharmaceuticals R&D business and Managing Partner and President of SR One Ltd, GSK’s venture‑capital business.
In this exclusive interview with the Wall Street Transcript, Mr. Rawcliffe lays out the strategic vision for his company.
“One of the advantages is that with our SPEAR T-cell therapies we can target solid tumors, something that CAR-Ts have shown no real ability so far because of the mechanism that is used. The targets that CAR-T therapies go after are just not on solid tumors to the same extent. Our technology goes all the way back to the University of Oxford back in the mid 1990s, so we have been at this for about 20 years in one form or another. We have the leading platform for engineering T-cell receptors, and the engineering of T-cell receptor is a really big area. All of the CAR-T players have worked out that, so far, CAR-T doesn’t work in solid tumors and have basically tried to move into engineering T-cell receptors as the targeting mechanism.”
“Our lead program actually is partnered with GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK), and that is probably the furthest along because it has got the most data associated with it. We have good data in synovial sarcoma. GSK is now prosecuting that, and actually a pivotal trial in synovial sarcoma was going to be the next step. GSK is now taking that over, and we are in process of transferring that. That pivotal trial won’t be a large trial, and maybe it will take a year or so to recruit and then maybe a year to read out. The potential there is to get to market in about two to three years after that trial starts.”
The company also has the capacity to produce its own treatments: “The manufacturing that we have built is in the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, and it is best conceived as a pilot clinical supply plant partially because of the capacity. We have got the capacity for up to 1,000 patients out of there, which will be fine for clinical trial supply. But, obviously, for commercial use, that supply would only support a very small launch. The way that that building and the labs are configured has to be very flexible, so it can be very good in a developmental process too as opposed to being only a fully fledged high throughput, low cost efficiency focused commercial facility…”
Read the complete interview with Adrian Rawcliffe of Adaptimmune at the Wall Street Transcript.
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