Date of birth: 01/01/1943

BIOGRAPHY

Michael Cleare, a British chemist, worked for Johnson Matthey, a materials company, from 1966 to 1999 where he was involved in the discovery and development of the second-generation platinum chemotherapy, carboplatin. Cleare was the named inventor on the fundamental composition patent for carboplatin and shepherded the agent through to regulatory approval in collaboration with Bristol Myers in Europe in 1986 and in the US in 1989. Johnson Matthey became the exclusive supplier of carboplatin to Bristol Myers Squibb and set up production in the UK.

Cleare took a BSc in chemistry from Imperial College, London, in 1965 and received a PhD titled ‘Platinum group metal complexes with pi-bonding ligands’ from the University of London in 1970, where he worked in the laboratories of Nobel Laureate Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson. He pursued post-doctoral studies at Michigan State University, US, from 1970 to 1972 with a focus on platinum anti-cancer research, exploring the structural rules governing what researchers believed would make an effective platinum drug.

Later in his career, Cleare has specialised in negotiating technology commercialisation agreements for universities. From 2000 to 2007, he was executive director of science and technology ventures at Columbia University, US, and from 2007 to 2013 worked at the University of Pennsylvania as associate vice provost for research, where he was responsible for high-profile licensing deals including immunotherapy (CAR-T 19) with Novartis and the mRNA platform technology now used to make covid-19 vaccines. Since retiring from the University of Pennsylvania he has been a technology transfer consultant at Arizona State University.