Nanovery, the Newcastle based cutting-edge platform biotech company, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Mark Chadwick as Chief Executive Officer. Nanovery is developing DNA nanorobots with many potential applications, including the diagnosis of deadly diseases at an early stage.

Mark is an entrepreneurial business leader who has specialised in growing drug discovery and development companies, with experience of several successful 'build to acquisition' journeys. He joins Nanovery at a pivotal point, to help drive forward the commercialisation of the biomarker testing application that the company has developed and successfully trialled in conjunction with NHS Innovation Laboratories.

On taking up his appointment Mark Chadwick commented, “I am delighted to be joining Nanovery at such a pivotal point in their journey. With a successful validation study now completed, the technology that has been developed by the company is in a prime position to challenge the state of the art in several applications. I have always been passionate about achieving improved healthcare outcomes for patients and believe that the diagnostic exploitation routes we are pursuing have the potential to deliver this.”

Co-founder of Nanovery, Jurek Kozyra welcomed Mark Chadwick to the team. “Mark has extensive experience in building science and technology-based businesses, including BioFocus, Excelsyn and Arcinova. He also previously led the listed oncology services business Physiomics PLC. Mark’s appointment will enable myself and our scientists to accelerate the trial stages of our technologies. We are delighted to welcome him and look forward to working together as we take Nanovery to commercial markets.”

Nanovery’s system has the potential to detect biomarkers directly in patient samples in under two hours, a process typically requiring multiple steps and taking many hours or even days. With applications ranging from diagnosing liver or kidney diseases to cancer, the technology has the potential to significantly improve access to screening across a wide range of healthcare settings.

Constructed entirely from synthetic DNA and operating at the nanoscale, DNA nanorobots blend physical chemistry with molecular computing. Nanovery’s DNA nanorobots are rationally programmed to perform an array of functions in response to the presence of a specific nucleic acid of interest, resulting in a measurable fluorescent signal.