UK-China Pharma Forum: Market Authorisation and Investment in the UK

Richard Cowin was appointed Counsellor for Healthcare and Life Sciences at the British Embassy in Beijing in November 2019. He is responsible for promoting trade and investment between the UK and China across pharmaceuticals, medical devices and healthcare. Richard leads a team of 19 that supports British companies export to China and Chinese companies invest in the UK.

From 2018 Richard was First Secretary for Health Policy and Programmes in Beijing. In previous diplomatic roles Richard has served in Vietnam, Korea and Japan covering political, economic and trade issues. In 2021 Richard was awarded the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his contribution to UK’s fight against Covid-19.

Tom Duke was appointed Minister Counsellor for the Department for International Trade in March 2019 and Deputy HM Trade Commissioner to China in 2020. As a member of the senior leadership team of DIT China and Hong Kong, Tom is responsible for trade and investment promotion, trade policy and market access across a range of industry sectors.
Tom has 15 years of experience working in China and East Asia, in both the public and private sectors. Immediately prior to joining DIT, Tom was the UK’s intellectual property attaché to China. From 2009-11 Tom was Director at the EU Chamber of Commerce in Seoul, South Korea.
Tom speaks Mandarin Chinese and Korean. He has an MSc in Financial Economics, specialising in the impact of Chinese exchange rate policy on the Balance of Payments. In his spare time, Tom enjoys running along the canals and mountain paths around Beijing, and spending time with his family.

James is a civil servant and diplomat with a twenty year plus career specialising in international prosperity and commercial engagement. He has had a number of roles within the Department for International Trade (DIT) and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the UK as well as in Guangzhou, China; Ekaterinburg, Russia; and Kuwait.

James holds master’s degrees in Research (International Relations), Public Administration, and in History.

Dr Laura Squire started her career as a post-doctoral research assistant looking at resistance to anti-malarial drugs at the Liverpool Institute of Tropical Medicine following her PhD and BSc in Biochemistry and Physiology. She has spent most of her career as a Civil Servant. After many years in operational work Laura moved into government policy in 2014. In parallel, she went back to university, gaining an Executive Master’s degree in Public Policy from the London School of Economics. Laura has extensive experience of regulatory compliance and enforcement and organisational transformation through her wider policy and operational work in other major government departments. In November 2021 Laura joined the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) as the Chief Healthcare Quality and Access Officer.

Du has travelled extensively throughout Asia Pacific region and has sourced overseas companies to collaborate with UK companies to increase inward investment in the UK.

His expertise can benefit any multinational organisation looking to invest in the UK in the fields of:

• Biopharmaceuticals
• Stem cell research
• Drug discoveries/screening
• Medical devices
• Diagnosis
• Functional food/natural medicine

On leaving research, Du became a specialist in bridging the gap between Asia and the UK in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors since 2000. He has identified many overseas companies offering opportunities for partnership and collaboration, many of which resulted in major R&D and FDI projects.

Jiansheng gained a PhD in molecular biology at the University of Cambridge, where he also conducted 10 years of medical research in the areas of human genetic disorder/axon regeneration and brain repair.

Simon Reid is Head of Sectors at Growth Platform – the Liverpool City Region Growth Company. Growth Platform has been set up by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to act as a single body responsible for inward investment, business growth, skills and education initiatives and destination marketing www.growthplatform.org

Brendan McGuigan is the Life & Health Science Lead for Invest Northern Ireland, the regional economic development agency, where he is responsible for leading the development of multinational Life and Health Sciences Sector in Northern Ireland. Brendan has overall responsibility for leading Invest NI’s strategic sector activities and accelerating the growth of Life Science business through target innovation, export and skills support. An engineer by profession with expertise in product innovation and programme management, Brendan began his career in the automotive industry working internationally across the UK, France and US, before joining Invest NI.

Deborah McGregor 博士是苏格兰国际发展局生物制药行业专家。她直接对接苏格兰特别是为制药和生物科技公司提供产品和服务的企业，帮助他们更好地拓展其海外业务。她拥有细胞领域博士学位，在加入苏格兰国际发展局前有超过17年药品和医疗领域研发岗位的从业经历。