Covid-19 roundup: Kate Bing­ham to lead UK task­force; Fed­er­al judge to Shkre­li: You’re not go­ing to save the world, stay in prison

A top biotech ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist has been named to chair a UK gov­ern­ment task­force on de­vel­op­ing and eq­ui­tably dis­trib­ut­ing a vac­cine.

Kate Bing­ham, man­ag­ing part­ner of SV Health Ven­tures, will lead the task­force, help­ing co­or­di­nate ef­forts across in­dus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment. Those ef­forts are now backed by £250 mil­lion ($303 mil­lion) in com­mit­ments from the UK gov­ern­ment.

As one of five man­ag­ing part­ners at SV, Bing­ham found­ed the £250 mil­lion De­men­tia Dis­cov­ery Fund five years ago. She has al­so at times been a voice for a change in bio­phar­ma, in 2016 pen­ning an open let­ter even­tu­al­ly signed by dozens of sci­en­tists and ex­ec­u­tives pil­lo­ry­ing a biotech for host­ing a par­ty that used women to woo male clients.

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