New hands on the helm at UK's TAP
application of robotics to pharmaceutical drug discovery and
production, has named a new chief executive to succeed Richard
Archer, who is stepping down in February.
The new CEO is Dr Andy Morffew, who joins TAP from contract research organisation Parexel International where he was president of Parexel Consulting Group.
Dr Morffew has expertise in a number of new business areas that TAP is currently pursuing, particularly automated new techniques in clinical applications such as genotyping.
Prior to joining Parexel, Dr Morffew spent 18 years at IBM, eventually leading the European Pharmaceutical and Process Industries Practice.
Archer, who founded TAP in 1987 and turned it into an independent company in 1996, will continue to work at the company in a consultancy capacity.
Along with PricewaterhouseCoopers, TAP has pioneered the concept of the Drug Discovery factory, the application of industrial scale automation a la automotive or computer industries to produce a massive increase in the speed and accuracy of the drug-screening process.
Since the company came into being, TAP has installed over 270 robotic systems in pharmaceutical drug discovery and production applications, many of which represent first-off uses for robots in these areas. Last week, the company unveiled Piccolo, latest product designed to automate the process of purifying proteins made in microbial or insect cells.
