Louise Jopling is the Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer at the Babraham Research Campus and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Babraham Institute.

Sarah and Louise talk about

1. Her career journey from immunology research to business leader and mentor
2. Why hearing about the real-world impact of health innovations still gives her goosebumps
3. The Babraham Research Campus 'melting pot' which creates a unique environment for research commercialisation and collaboration

Find out more

1. Read the show notes and transcript on the podcast website
2. Connect to Louise on LinkedIn
3. Find out about the Babraham Research Campus and Babraham Institute

About Research Adjacent

1. Fill out the research-adjacent careers quiz
2. Sign up to the Research Adjacent newsletter
3. Follow Research Adjacent on LinkedIn Instagram and BlueSky
4. Email a comment, question or suggestion
5. Leave Sarah a voice message

Mentioned in this episode:

Interested in advertising on the podcast?

If you have a service, product, event, or opportunity that would be of interest to our audience get in touch via hello@researchadjacent.com to explore how we can work together.

Member of the Month: Vicky Bowskill, Inklusive Nature

Vicky helps researchers and changemakers to connect nature, science & society by telling compelling visual stories. Find out more at www.inklusivenature.com

Now you can make your career sound as, oh, it was

all planned out when I was 15 and this is the path I went on.

We know that's all gonna be generally hogwash.

The impact that you knew about or you could see for the patients, the

quality of life and that permeating not just for that patient, but for their

family members or their social lives.

I still get goosebumps now just even talking to you about it.

It's such a hard and lonely journey for the founders and for those small companies

I'm just blown away by their resilience.

Hello there.

I'm Sarah McLusky and this is Research Adjacent.

Each episode I talk to amazing research adjacent professionals about what

they do and why it makes a difference.

Keep listening to find out why we think the research adjacent space

is where the real magic happens.

Hello and welcome to the Research Adjacent podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah McLusky, and today we'll be meeting Louise Jopling.

Louise is currently the Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer

at the Babraham Research Campus, a biotech business park in Cambridge.

She's also entrepreneur in residence at the academic Babraham Institute,

which is on the same site.

Louise originally aspired to be a vet, but became an immunologist instead.

She started out on an academic research path, but ultimately moved into the

commercial side of the biotech industry, a career move which included launching the

psoriasis drug Stelara and commercialising other healthcare innovations.

Now she supports both fledging and established businesses, as well as

helping academic researchers explore the potential applications of their work.

In our conversation, we talk about why the Babraham Research Campus is such a

special place, her career story and why making a difference to real people is

what gets her out of bed in the morning.

Listen on to hear Lou's story.

Welcome Lou along to the Research Adjacent podcast.

It's fantastic to have you here.

I wonder if we could begin by just hearing a little bit about

who you are and what you do.

Great.

Thanks Sarah, and lovely to meet you.

So yes, Louise Jopling.

My day job is as Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer at the Babraham

Research Campus in Cambridge.

I'm also a Royal Society entrepreneur in residence at the Babraham Institute.

My day job as CSIO is very much around working with the 60 life sciences

companies that we have on campus, and they are anything from a two person

startup through to a hundred, 150 person grow on scale up company that

have grown while speaking on campus, perhaps over the past decade or more.

And it's understanding what their needs are.

Helping, especially the small companies come out of stealth mode, develop

their data package so that they become ready to put in front of investors.

Making those connections between researchers, clinical

teams as well and investors.

Investors in particular because of the financial markets that we're

in, particularly in life sciences.

So yeah, at the Babraham Research campus, then

it's a site so near Cambridge.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

About six miles south of Cambridge.

So yeah, we are in, in the southern cluster.

If you know where Addenbrookes Hospital is and if you know where

the Wellcome Genome Campus is, then we're right slap bang in the middle.

Okay.

Yeah.

You're driving past us, so pop in and say hi.

Yeah.

And so it's all focused on life sciences then all the research

that goes on on that site.

Could you give us maybe a couple of examples of the sorts of things

that people are doing there?

Oh yeah.

So we've got companies that are supporting other companies in their

development, their drug discovery and their drug development capabilities.

So often small companies don't have those skill sets in-house.

Maybe haven't got quite the industry training in generating

those robust data packages.

So not quite acting as a CRO, but or contract research organisation, but

actually working in true partnership to enable them to develop that data package

for toxicology, for their formulation of their drug or their molecule.

So that's a sort of very high level example for one of the companies.

And then we've got some very early early stage startup companies, very much around

antibody and biologics engineering.

Yeah.

So as a campus, monoclonal antibodies are our sweet spot these days.

Quite a lot of those protein modalities are very much around

the antibody drug conjugates.

It's a lot about AI or machine learning, helping inform the best

target to go after or targets.

And the best combinations, let's say, of whether it's two, two drugs

in combination or whether it's a particular conjugate once that molecule

has gotten onto or inside the cell.

Yeah, the, and the research focus of the Institute is very much around

we, if we say healthy aging, that sort of makes us tend to think about

the later stages of the life course.

But actually the research focuses across all life stages for human health.

So from birth to death.

And it's really about we all know we are living longer, but

we're not healthier for longer.

Yeah.

We all still have an average of about the last 20 years is in poor health,

and that's where the health healthcare organisation really is needed.

So it's aiming for that lifespan to be extended.

Oh, fantastic.

And I imagine having all of those companies and that intense research

all happening in the same place is fantastic for support and

collaboration and those sorts of things.

And it, it sounds like that's very much part of your role.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

We've got the academic researchers and the companies on campus,

companies off campus as well.

Theoretically on, even within the perimeter of our campus, and we

are on 430 acres, I should say.

We don't use that by any stretch.

And, again, you could imagine just even getting between buildings, but,

just to have that close proximity.

And we've got a central sort of building where people from all

across the campus come for their lunch, their coffees, their meetings.

So it creates, I call it the melting pot 'cause that's really where

those serendipitous interactions could and should be happening.

Mm-hmm.

And part of what I want to bring as well is how can we really maximize that?

So you're not always, you need a critical mass.

You need to be coming to where everybody is, but can we enable that at other parts

of the campus as well and in other ways?

Yeah.

But I think through the funding that, that we get through the BBSRC, which

is the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council that

really does it pump primes those academic industry partnerships.

And there's also a collaborative PhD studentship programmme on campus that

has supported or is supporting 22 PhD students all at different stages of their

journey where they have to spend at least three months in their industrial company.

Oh yeah.

organisation.

Now, whether that's three months as a single time period, or whether it's

a week here, a week there, but they get that industry supervisor as well.

So Really, yeah.

Really great opportunities.

Really fantastic.

Yes.

To connect up that research with that real world potential impact.

Yeah.

Which is such a big aim now for research.

So how does all of this dovetail with the entrepreneur in residence

role that you have as well?

Yeah, I'd say dovetails seamlessly.

Yeah.

But obviously I would say that.

So the entrepreneur in residence role, so that is specifically

for the academic Institute.

And it is to support the translation and centres of the research

conducted within the Institute.

Now it's a small institute about 350 staff.

So you know, mostly scientists from PhD student up through to group leaders.

But there's also some heads of core facilities.

So these are real capability centres of excellence, if you like that

are funded by BBSRC, particularly to serve the academic research.

But where bandwidth exists within those core facilities and what

I mean by those core facilities, it might be a flow cytometry.

It might be cell it might be sequencing, might be an animal unit as well 'cause

often some analysis needs to be conducted in in vivo. So they're just some examples.

But where there's bandwidth within those facilities, then the companies

themselves that are on campus can actually pay to to use those services

and to enable their discoveries and one very small company, they're in stealth

currently, so I can't say their name.

Yeah.

But did describe being on campus as having your own CRO contract research

organisation on your doorstep.

So he, the CEO and founder was particularly, he was walking over

to our central stores facility.

Doesn't sound very exciting, but actually it's this massive procurement

hub, off the scale, that enables the science for the companies and for

the institute to happen seamlessly.

They're not have, the small company is not having to negotiate with 500 different

suppliers for basic things like gloves through to high, highly complex stuff.

They can just move in, move on to campus, crack on with their

science and everything else is.

Is, taken care of.

But going back to the institute itself, obviously it conducts many more enabling

services in addition to the research, but yeah, the world leading research,

high impact papers from the group leaders, the PhD students, and everybody

in between, and all enabled by that infrastructure and the capabilities.

So yeah, it, as I say, it's a small institute relative to, quite

large universities, et cetera.

But that's meant I've been really able to get under the bonnet of all

of the science that's going on here and all of those centres projects.

And I think one of my biggest challenges or things that I wrestled with at

the start of the fellowship was how can I make an impact one day a week?

Parachuting into the institute and and it was really getting under the

bonnet of all of the programmmes that were in the commercialisation

portfolio, let's call it, and working out, these are the ones that are

perhaps more, more mature or that, that really, I could bring an impact.

So there's about four or five that I'm really actively working on it doesn't

mean I'm ignoring the others, but it just, they're not all equal at the same moment.

Yeah.

And also as you say, one day a week, you can only do a limited amount of stuff.

So you have to prioritize to a certain extent.

Yeah.

I think, yeah, I think it's like when you start any

new job you think of your, what's your 30, 60, 90 day plan or the

first a hundred days gonna look like.

And I very quickly realized, actually my first 30 days is

really only going to be four days.

So that was a real awakening.

And, not a bad thing, but it just, means that, yeah, you do focus and prioritize,

but I think the other piece that.

It's not just about the science and translating that is a core piece, but it

is also about and this is the nature of this podcast, research adjacent, and it

is about helping hone and inspire sort of the scientists from wherever they

are in their career journey, in their own research and their own aspirations.

And I got to present a Science 360 talk, which was very much

talk us through your career.

Now you can make your career sound as, oh, it was all planned out when I

was 15 and this is the path I went on.

We know that's all gonna be generally hogwash.

Yeah.

For, majority of us.

And just talking that through and actually bringing that to life.

And it wasn't just attended by the more junior or people at the

earlier stages of their career.

There were some really quite senior individuals in that audience asking

particular questions pertinent to their, where they were at that moment in time,

whether that was from a professional, but also from a personal perspective.

And a lot of it is how does one manage one's time.

None of, I think if anybody had got that nailed, we'd have patented

it and be making yeah, money out.

Yeah somebody would be making a lot of money out it,

B ut I think sometimes one can project things as if, yeah,

it's all sorted and it's all a doddle and that's how it can look to others.

But actually really getting under the skin of either what drives me or

what, where you might have had to make personal sacrifices or compromises.

Yeah.

It's, it just shows that authenticity and the fact that you're human.

Yeah.

And I think that's leading us really nicely then to just invite you to tell

us a bit about your career journey, about how you've ended up where you are

now, what kind of jobs you've done along the way what, what's your path been?

Yeah.

So overall so I'm a scientist by training.

I always wanted to be a vet. So from when I was about 11, when unfortunately

my cat needed to be put down.

I, he was my cat and I felt if I was the vet, I'd have saved him.

Of course what an arrogant 11-year-old, of course you're gonna think that.

However, followed that and focused up purely on science throughout

GCSEs A levels and university.

I didn't get into veterinary at the time, but I'd got my my other

courses I'd applied for animal biology, so zoology, but I wanted

to specialise in parasitology.

So worms, parasites.

Yeah.

Which led me to study up in Scotland actually.

And it was based on where the course was.

I was always fascinated by how parasites evade the host immune system.

Yeah.

Again, that then led me onto my immunology research path.

So I describe, I'm no longer a parasitologist.

I still remember all of those things.

But as a, as an immunologist, I got a very great grounding in my

first two roles after I graduated.

And I should just say after I graduated from the University of Aberdeen, I

did an eight week summer studentship actually at the Babraham Institute.

And I didn't realize quite how circular this was all going to be.

So again, I could make that be a perfect story, but it's not meant that way anyway.

I did a couple of research assistant posts to get experience in the lab.

One of which, at the University of Edinburgh at the Center for HIV research.

And at that time, so that was the mid nineties when chemokine receptors,

these G protein coupled receptors had been identified as co-receptors

for viral entry into cells.

They were facilitating the HIV virus, getting into cells and then amplifying.

And that was a really sweet time in as much as it really

captured my scientific interest.

And it was, we were on the start of that crest of the wave around

that particular area of research.

And so really I followed that family of receptors throughout probably

the next decade plus of my career.

And that was in both academia but also in biotech.

So I did my two research assistant posts, got experience in the lab,

competent, and I then applied to what was Europe's leading chemokine receptor lab.

And just the letter I wrote I read it back some years ago and it was quite

cringe, but my timing was fantastic.

It was all I one, the chemokine receptors were wonderful, this, that, and the other.

My research and that I, but I really wanted to do PhD.

Fortunately that lab at the time based at Imperial College had a,

had attracted some industry funding.

So in essence I was industry funded.

It was a US biotech company.

And so for three years I conducted my PhD research and I think what

was great was I was able to conduct that research within three years.

So from registration to submission,

That is impressive.

Yeah, no, thank you.

But I think it was because I'd already earned my stripes and got

my lab skills in the two years prior in those research assistant posts.

So again, that, that really enabled that.

Anyway, I then followed the receptor I'd been working on in my PhD out

to Boston to Harvard Med School.

So I was working at Children's Hospital and that was fantastic.

So then in 2000, end of 2002, I came back to the UK.

I always thought I was gonna stay in academia to be quite

honest, but never say never.

And I came back to a job in biotech.

Yeah.

And at the time it was Britain's biggest biotech company called Celltech.

And Celltech had a small molecule site in Cambridge on Granta Park.

So literally a stone's throw from where I'm sat talking to you today.

And I was recruited there as a pharmacologist and I was there for six

years in small molecule drug discovery.

Leading a team of pharmacologists as well.

And then 2008 came, and you so sorry.

I should say in that six year period, Celltech were acquired by a Belgian,

medium sized pharma company called UCB.

So that for me at that time was so quite junior in an industry

career, was you felt that the rug had been taken from under you.

We've been acquired.

What are they gonna do?

They're headquartered in Belgium.

Are they gonna shut us down?

That's your first very human, visceral thought.

No they didn't and we keep doing what you are doing otherwise

you play to that narrative that sort of negative human thinking.

And so yeah, I think that was about 2005 that, that deal all went through.

But then in 2008 they did announce the closure of that

Cambridge, the Granta Park site.

They kept the Slough site and that's still going today.

And I was one of the few lucky ones.

At the time that was offered retention within UCB, but it meant

relocation to Slough and I thought I'll see what else is out there.

It was a fantastic plan B and a plan B that many of my colleagues didn't have.

So I was acutely aware of that.

But then through friends, people in your network fighting the corner, going, I

think this job could be good for you.

I joined Janssen, which at the, that was the name at the time, the

pharmaceutical arm of Johnson and Johnson.

They've now rebranded to Johnson and Johnson Innovative Medicine,

but then they were Janssen.

But I moved away from the bench, so I stopped being a bench scientist

conducting the experiments.

I moved to launch a product.

Yeah, so I was the product and therapy area expert for a drug called Stelara,

which I still feel that I, I'm Stelara to the core, the molecule, the

mechanism, but not just that it was, so that's the scientist in me talking,

but it was, I was getting closer to the dermatologist prescribing that.

So what's a drug for?

So it was launched as the first indication in psoriasis,

right?

Okay.

Yeah.

And it was a different mechanism of action, a new, totally

new mechanism of action to the other biologic therapies that had

been on the market for psoriasis.

It's now got indications across a number of different diseases,

psoriatic arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, for example.

But, that was the impact that you could, you knew about or you could

see for the patients, the quality of life and that permeating not just for

that patient and what it meant for them, but for their family members

or their social lives and just, those are the, I still get goosebumps now

just even talking to you about it.

I was, I had the pleasure to attend a psoriasis clinic in Manchester.

At what was Salford Royal at the time, and just hearing those individual patient.

Stories, their journeys with this chronic debilitating disease.

They'll stay with me forever.

But it just yeah, it was just awe inspiring.

But I think one of the other pieces that, that role taught me.

So I was covering the whole of the UK.

Yeah.

So I was engaging with dermatology departments.

I got to see all parts of the UK.

Some I might not necessarily wanna go back to, but you know

how it just opened your horizons.

But it, you got to really hear the challenges of the healthcare system, the

prescribers at the time, the nurses, and what, whatever those challenges were, but

helping them understand the appropriate place for use of that particular

drug in amongst all of the others.

How do I make those treatment decisions?

And that drug wasn't necessarily, you wouldn't give it to every patient that

came through your clinic door next.

It was just ah, but it now is an option.

Whereas we didn't have that option so many months prior.

But one of the biggest learnings I had was training a sales force.

Mm-hmm.

They didn't care about the immunology principles of how Stelara worked.

They just wanted, what are my key selling messages?

How can I understand all of this complicated science.

And that was just fantastic.

And many of those, I'm still in touch with today.

So yeah, overall I was at Janssen for 11 years.

Five of those on that medical affairs side of the business.

Very much on the commercial side.

So I moved very quickly from a UK to a, what we call a regional role, right?

Yeah.

That was Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

So that was even more travel than I'd been doing before.

And then about 2012, 2013 Johnson and Johnson announced the opening of

their innovation centres globally.

There were four at the time across the globe to really engage with

the external scientific community.

So the biotech companies, the universities, the investors in

the EMEA region, for example.

And the office is based in London and.

I felt that was gonna take me much more back onto the sort

of r and d side of things.

Yeah, the earlier drug discovery through to development.

And in essence, I shoehorned my way in there.

There wasn't a job created, I had to find creative ways to

de-risk it for the business.

Because this was a whole new concept to these innovation centres.

They'd got individuals for each of the therapy areas.

Immunology was the therapy area I worked in and wanted to stay in and

had appointed somebody to lead that.

Yeah, I just thought what about if I do a secondment for a year,

and if we can create the business case for a second headcount role.

Then great.

If not, I'll find something else.

And within nine months we'd created the headcount role.

And built a portfolio that was from really early, exploratory blue sky

science through to clinical proof of concept molecules that ran external

to what we were doing internally.

'cause that was the whole point.

You didn't want it to compete with internal resources.

But yeah, so that was a real buzz and Yeah.

Yeah, I was, I did that for six years.

And then about that time at that time I was headhunted for a role

at an organisation that's now called Health Innovation East

to be their commercial director.

I didn't really know what Health Innovation East did, but in essence

they're funded partly by the NHS and Office for Life Sciences to bring

health technologies at pace to their local NHS and Health Innovation East.

The east part refers to the East of England, so that's a population of about

five and a half to 6 million people.

I happen to live in the East of England.

Yeah, so due to my family.

So anything that could expedite their diagnosis, their treatment

journeys, whatever that was.

That felt really compelling.

So yeah, my, my team, I had to set up a team from scratch.

And when I left after six years, so that was in October, 2024 I.

The team were about 14 people.

A mixture of industry secondments as well as headcount employees

of all sorts of experiences.

And we really were the engine room working with the companies.

From the small medTech companies to the very large corporates, the Johnson

Johnsons, the AstraZenecas and everybody else, and really helping them develop

their value propositions so that then when we brokered that conversation with

stakeholders within the NHS, it was it was a much more fulfilling conversation

for everybody's time, rather than, oh, we've been trying to get into that

particular hospital or speak to GPs.

And some of that was small companies helping them with their product

design and getting it in the hands of who would be eventual users.

And, one company, through a very early, what we call the public

patient involvement session.

They claim that they got to product design freeze 12 months

earlier than if they hadn't have done that at that moment in time.

So again, I think as founders or as scientists or maybe clinicians as well,

we focus on what we're trying, what the tech, yeah, what all the fancy

stuff is that we're trying to do.

And we don't always think to let's just sanity check this with, even

if it's just two or three end users.

That's not quite working or I can't see the result there.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now we need to work on that.

Yeah.

Oh.

As somebody who's a huge advocate for, patient and public involvement.

It's great to hear the difference that it makes 'cause sometimes when you tell

people and they're a bit like, oh yeah.

Whatever.

But yeah to actually have a tangible difference is amazing.

And so it makes sense hearing all about your history there, why you are such a

good candidate for this entrepreneur in residence role, having this experience

across lots of different organisations, but I can tell from just the way

you're speaking that it's that making a difference in the real world that seems

to be the thing that really motivates you.

Yeah, absolutely.

And.

Again, just, it is gonna sound a bit trite whenever I say it, but as I said

in my previous role at Health Innovation East, it was very much the local

news happens to be called Look East.

And there was, an occasion where this particular device I

referenced about the user insights and that was on the teatime news.

Oh, fantastic.

And I was able to put on my family WhatsApp chat.

Oh look, check the news out there.

And just to feel you were a little crumb in the whole journey.

And that now coming to patients or being much more widely known about.

Yeah that's just.

Yeah, I don't need to be the spokesperson or the front person for it, but just, and

also for those founders, it's such a hard, hard and lonely journey for the founders

and for those small companies to really, I'm just blown away by their resilience.

Constantly.

And if I can just help them overcome whatever that barrier is, and sometimes

it is just having an objective shoulder to cry on or ear to li that

listens to and can play stuff back.

Perhaps in a, with other perspectives.

But what's lovely is those founders never forget and they're so thankful and you

just think it, to me, that now feels a tiny little thing given where you've got

to now, how much money you've raised, how many patients you are supporting.

But yeah it's quite humbling in that kind of way.

So yeah that's what gets me outta bed in the morning.

Yeah.

It's really coming across.

And so I do like to ask all of my guests this question, but if you had

a magic wand, what would you change about the world that you work in?

Oh, equitable access.

For every patient or person, that needed a particular health technology, let's

call it, not necessarily a drug, but health technology, equitable access.

We don't have equitable access in the UK or in England, let alone globally.

So that's what it would be.

Yeah.

So is this meaning what they talk about as the postcode lottery side of things?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

No, that does sound, and when you hear about all these

new technologies and treatments and things that are coming out, it, I

guess is I probably not the only person who goes through your mind.

You're like, oh yeah, that's well and good, but will

anybody actually get to use it?

Yeah.

Yes.

That would indeed be a fantastic thing.

Keeping an eye on the time.

We should probably think about wrapping up our conversation.

So if anybody wants to find out more about you or the work that

they, that you do, whereabouts would be the best place to find out?

So I've got LinkedIn profile so anybody can message me on that.

And then we can connect through, through emails and things thereafter.

Finding out about what the Babraham Research Campus does we've got a website

and on that we've got our impact report, which is a nice distilled summary of

the, basically the economic impacts, job creation and investment raised

by the companies that we support.

But it's got everything else that we do on the campus as well.

Oh, that sounds fantastic.

We'll get links for both of those and put them in the show notes.

It just remains to say thank you so much for taking the time to

come along and share what you do and your journey to get there.

It has been really interesting.

Oh, thank you very much, Sarah.

Likewise.

Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent.

If you're listening in a podcast app, please check your subscribed and then

use the links in the episode description to find full show notes and to follow

the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram.

You can also find all the links and other episodes@www.researchadjacent.com.

Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky,

and the theme music is by Lemon Music Studios on Pixabay.

And you, yes you, get a big gold star for listening right to the end.

See you next time.