Founder & CEO
Loxbridge Research
Founder & Chairman
Virgin Group
Charles is the founding CEO of Loxbridge Research LLP, a ‘venture pilot’ investment company focusing on founding and managing enterprises to develop innovative beneficial technologies (either founded as partnerships with external inventors or by in-house invention) which address a massive global unmet need. Current projects are addressing novel pipeline therapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases, and developing new diagnostic methods.
Notable projects include Altermune Technologies – a flagship SPV project Charles runs under the Loxbridge umbrella – founded to develop a novel platform therapeutic method invented by Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis (inventor of PCR and the current Altermune CSO). The company has just demonstrated preclinical effect against MRSA to rival vancomycin, one of the world’s most powerful antibiotics. Charles also founded Zoragen Biotechnologies, a company currently in promising clinical trials with Oxford University to develop non-invasive diagnostics using cell-free DNA in blood samples. He is also a founding director and CEO of WZVI Ltd, a company launching pioneering trials to investigate a non-invasive, non-X-Ray and low-cost electrical impedance imaging technology (‘Signascan’), with potential to revolutionise breast screening in both the developed and developing worlds.
In the environmental space, Charles is the founding CEO of greeenstar.org , a not-for-profit creating a new consumer-driven market force to incentivize carbon reductions at large corporates by rating them against competitors on carbon footprints, packaging the ratings for consumers and distributing the ratings online via Search. The greeenstar* model has received widespread acclaim and interest from academic groups (at Oxford, Cambridge and Stanford Universities, the World Resources Institute) and NGOs (Forum for the Future, WWF and Greenpeace) alike. The project was presented at TED Long Beach in March 2011.
Outside work, Charles has also pursued a love for photography and film, leading to volunteer work directing short films for healthcare charities. The film ‘Satchin - The Deadly Push’ (Safepoint films 2007), highlighting the dangers of needle re-use, won a Highly Commended in the IVCA Clarion Awards, has been praised by the President of India, and recently won $1 million philanthropic foundation funding for distribution. In November 2008 it was screened to cinema and television audiences totalling a recorded 208 million people, making it the largest public information broadcast in India’s history
Founder and Chairman of the Virgin Group. Virgin is one of the world’s
most recognized and respected brands and has expanded into everything
from air and ground travel to telecommunications, health, space travel
and renewable energy through more than 200 companies’ worldwide,
employing approximately 50,000 people in 29 countries.
In the same way he approaches starting a business, Richard works with
partners on the frontlines to tackle tough social and environmental
challenges with talented people and innovative approaches. In 2007,
along with Nelson Mandela, Graça Machel and Peter Gabriel, Richard and
a group of wonderful partners announced the formation of the Elders, a
group of global leaders to contribute their wisdom, independent
leadership and integrity to tackle some of the world’s toughest
problems.
Richard is also putting significant focus into Virgin Unite, the
not-for-profit foundation of the Virgin Group, which unites people to
tackle social and environmental issues in an entrepreneurial way.
Virgin Unite supports a number of efforts ranging from the creation of
sustainable healthcare models in Africa, to fostering young
entrepreneurs through the Branson School of Entrepreneurship in South
Africa.