Oxford Biomedica, the troubled UK biotech, has appointed a new acting chief executive after Mike McDonald, who took over the role in July, left the company.

John Dawson, the new acting chief executive, is a mergers and acquisitions specialist with experience at Cephalon, the US biotech, where he was chief financial officer and head of business development in Europe. He joined Oxford BioMedica as a non-executive director last month, after spending a short time at Ardana, the Scottish biotech which called in the administrators earlier this year.

Mr McDonald, formerly the company’s chief medical officer, became chief executive in July after Professor Alan Kingsman, the company’s founder, stepped aside to become chairman.

Since then, the company suffered a huge blow when its lead medicine, cancer vaccine TroVax, failed a trial in kidney cancer. Its share price plummeted 59 per cent to 7.5p on the day the trial results were announced.

Damian McNeela, analyst at Panmure Gordon said there had been concerns over Mr McDonald’s strategy following the setback.

Oxford Biomedica still has enough cash from an alliance with Sanofi-Aventis, the French pharmaceuticals giant, to develop Trovax, to see it through to 2010.

It is also developing ProSavin, which could help treat Parkinson’s disease.

It announced a first half-net loss of £1.1 million pounds against a 9.3 million loss at

the same time last year this morning and said its cash position was £27 million compared with £42.5 million last year.

Nick Woolf, chief business officer at Oxford Biomedica, told Times Online: “It has been challenging, particularly in the last six weeks.

“John has a lot of deal making and a lot of senior management experience. We’re evaluating our options for products and companies that could provide us with further opportunities for growth.”

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