The course of Jeremy Skillington’s year took a fateful turn in March when he took a call from Cathal Friel, chairman of Open Orphan, a clinical trials company listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM). At the time Skillington was tidying up the loose ends of the landmark €380 million sale of Irish biotech company Inflazome to Roche, a Swiss pharmaceutical multinational, and plotting three months of leisure.
Donegal deal-maker Friel dangled the dizzying prospect of heading an Irish biotech company that would list on the stock market within three to six months.
Open Orphan (LON:ORPH) was founded in 2017, with the goal of rapidly building Europe’s leading pharma services company by a management team with extensive industry and financial expertise. The company comprises of two commercial specialist CRO services businesses (Venn Life Sciences and hVIVO) and is also developing a genomics data platform business (Genomic Health Data).