Profile: Antony Odell

Vacuum packed in plastic, it looks more like the remains of Sunday lunch than a complex medical device which could revolutionise medicine.

But it’s a breakthrough in regrowing body parts which recently convinced investors to pump £25m into Tissue Regenix.

The success of the fundraising took even the company by surprise. “If you’d told me in November we would raise £25m by the end of December, I’d have been astounded,” admitted the managing director of the loss-making university spin-out.

“But,” said Mr Odell, “it’s got the potential to be a huge company if it wants to be.”

If that sounds a little bullish, it has a few influential believers.

The York-based company’s fundraising, pulled off amid dire capital markets, brought one of the City’s best known fund managers on board. By the end of December, an Invesco fund, managed by Neil Woodford, had amassed a 26 per cent stake in the company.

Attracted by Tissue’s innovative medical technology, Invesco now has 28.6 per cent.

Of course, fundraisings like this are helped when your board is chaired by the former CEO of a medical products giant and your non-executives are taken from the upper echelons of the investment management industry.

John Samuel, Tissue’s executive chairman, headed Mölnlycke Health Care Group until its 2.85bn euro sale, and was a partner in private equity firm Apax Partners.

Alan Miller, a non-exec, was chief investment officer and founding shareholder of New Star Asset Management, sold to Henderson for £115m. Another non-exec, Alan Aubrey, heads IP Group, the UK’s biggest listed investor in university spin-outs.

“Track record and credibility count for a huge amount in this business,” said Mr Odell. “If you can stand there and look like you know what you are talking about it’s half the battle done.

“What John and the other members of the board bring is financial credibility.”

And that’s vital when you are marketing pieces of pig.

Tissue, spun out of the University of Leeds in 2006, takes pieces of porcine tissue and strips them of cells and DNA. This ‘decellularisation’ process, done using ‘clever detergents’, leaves a scaffold or matrix which is ideal for cultivating human tissue.

The resulting product is initially being used to patch up veins, but could be used in everything from repairing knee joints to brain surgery – with minimal side effects.

“We don’t get an immune response – if you get an immune response the whole things starts breaking down. It behaves very much like a piece of fresh tissue.

“Your own body does the regeneration. It becomes a living piece of you.” If it all sounds a bit Frankenstein’s monster, Mr Odell is quick to dispel any misconceptions.

“Animal tissue has been used for heart valves for years. There are no ethical issues. We’re just using a by-product of the food industry to produce a medical device.”

Mr Odell’s job is making this technology a commercial success. Crucially, it’s not classed as a therapy, but as a medical device. This makes its passage from clinical trial to regular surgical use a much smoother process.

After 30 years in the medical devices industry, he’s well versed in the arduous process of turning products into a commercial success. Roughly half his career has been spent with big healthcare multinationals, and the other half with small and growing independent medical technology firms.

On leaving the University of Southampton with a degree in physiology and biochemistry, he flirted with the idea of becoming a lawyer, but a boring part-time legal job put him off.

He joined the medical products arm of former defence giant Vickers, before increasingly senior roles with Johnson & Johnson, Stryker and Fresenius.

Eventually he moved into managing small companies. He was co-director of Xeno Medical, a medical technology consultancy, as well as chief executive of a UK cardiovascular device spin-out, Tayside Flow Technologies.

“Because I’ve worked for large companies and I’m a little company it helps to understand how a large company’s mind ticks.”

Mr Odell joined Tissue in 2008, becoming CEO later that year. He is managing director because Mr Samuel’s role is an executive one.

Mr Odell said the company’s founders, John Fisher and Eileen Ingham, sought “people who have done this before”.

The company joined the Alternative Investment Market in summer 2010 through a reverse takeover, following 10 years’ research by Professors Fisher and Ingham. “I’m a businessman, not a scientist,” said Odell. “I understand how to get products to market.

“People are good at certain things. They might be good scientists but they are not (necessarily) good businessmen. We look at it from a different perspective. John managed one of the world’s largest global wound care companies which sold for a huge amount of money.

“He’s built a business from nothing. I’ve done similar things.”

Tissue’s first product, the dCELL vascular patch, is gaining recognition among surgeons, soon to be followed by the dCELL meniscus.

The particular piece of ‘gristle’ sitting on table between us is a meniscus replacement. It aims to fix worn-out knee joints suffered by ‘weekend warriors’ – athletes and amateur sportsmen. Mr Odell believes Tissue’s product has the potential to steal a slice of the lucrative orthopaedic market. It’s rare for him to sit in a meeting in the City where someone hasn’t suffered a meniscus injury, be it through rugby, skiing or football.

While these injuries have typically been treated with a ‘big piece of metal’, Mr Odell said Tissue’s implant “allows your own body to do the regeneration”.

Tests of its vascular patch show the body is so tolerant of the device that after a while it becomes hard to find.

“It has the potential to be very disruptive to some big companies in this market,” said Mr Odell. “It’s got the potential to reduce their turnover and profits. The closer this gets to market, the more we believe it’s going to become attractive for a large company.”

But until then, Tissue is happy in its independence. Mr Odell said the £25m was vital in allowing the company to avoid having to surrender equity to a multinational.

Mr Odell believes developing and commercialising this technology can be done from its Yorkshire base thanks to the strong skills in the region – although where exactly remains undecided.

But there’s one more reason for staying put. Handily, said Mr Odell, “Yorkshire has a lot of pigs”.

Landmarks in a life

Title: managing director, Tissue Regenix

Date of Birth: August 14, 1961

Education: Physiology and biochemistry at the University of Southamp- ton

First job: product manager at Vickers Medical

Favourite music: Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music

Favourite film: The Man in the White Suit (1951)

Last book read: Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope

Car driven: Fiat 500

Holiday destination: Lazio and Umbria in Italy

Most proud of: I don’t dwell too much on the past, so raising £25m for Tissue Regenix