An American Tale

University is often the start of a new journey, to new places, to new people, to new careers.

For one Manchester Metropolitan alumna, this journey would take her from the University to the hallowed corridors of The White House – the home of the President of The United States of America.

Anne-Marie Corner has had a stellar career as a scientist and businesswomen in the US after graduating from the University in 1982 – Manchester Polytechnic as it was then – with a degree in chemistry and biology. The early 1980s was a world full of possibilities with new breakthroughs happening all the time.

Corner grasped these opportunities as a research scientist and a businesswoman, launching a biotechnology company in the US that conducted vital work into combatting HIV.

Her expertise in the field would later be called upon in Washington D.C., joining the heads of major pharmaceutical companies at The White House to provide vital insight into fighting HIV and AIDS. She has also been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Vogue for her entrepreneurship and work on HIV.

Corner’s journey began at school in Wales, before coming to the University in 1979. It proved to be a great choice.

“I arrived at possibly the best time ever because it was the birth of punk. You name the band, we saw them,” said Corner.

She added: “When I got there (Manchester) everything was so great, I made good friends, the city was fantastic. Everything I was learning was so stimulating and inspiring.

“It was just fantastic to be listening to these new molecular biology techniques and how this was going to revolutionise what was happening. Here we are many years later and pretty much every drug I see advertised on American TV is based on recombinant proteins, monoclonal antibodies – all that stuff that was just new in the science field then.”

Corner also met husband James while they were both students at Manchester Polytechnic, setting in motion the next step in her journey: moving to the US. Together, they made America their home and both excelled in their careers while raising their two daughters.

Landscape architect James, who graduated from the landscape design degree course, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Manchester Metropolitan in summer 2019 for advancing the fields of landscape architecture and urbanism, and commitment to urban green spaces and regeneration projects.

Like Anne-Marie, James holds a collection of accolades, and continues to deliver exciting projects as part of James Corner Field Operations, a landscape architecture, urban design and public realm practice based in New York City and London.

They married not long after graduation and set out for the US, where James started a graduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, a city which is still their home.

“I immediately applied to research labs,” said Corner. “That’s how I got exposed to the whole HIV infectious disease world.

“The interesting thing about that time was the emergence of HIV. People didn’t really know what it was, where it was coming from. And I was very happy doing my research, but I was at a point where I needed to make a decision: do I continue on this path and do a PhD?

“I always had this thing in my head about biotechnology business. So I decided to do my graduate degree in business instead of science.”

It proved to be a smart choice as it led Corner to launch her own company, with the MBA’s final thesis becoming the actual business plan for her fledgling firm.

She said: “A new technology had started being developed from a third party and the University of Pennsylvania. Between me and my mentor, the professor in our lab Dr Daniel Malamud, we were like ‘that’s a really great opportunity here to work with this within HIV’.

“The application was for the prevention of transmission. At the time, there was some work on vaccines, which was going nowhere, and some work on cures that was also going nowhere.

“That was the impetus to start looking at drugs that could stop transmission of HIV from men to women and also from women to men.”

The new company, Biosyn, focused on developing a contraceptive gel – known as Savvy – which it hoped would prevent transmission of HIV. Corner’s new role saw her working with investors from the venture capital world, and the US scientific and drug administration authorities.

Corner explained: “We had this whole pipeline of drugs and we were the first company to go into phase three human trials. That’s the very last phase of testing. At one point, we had over 5,000 people using our drug worldwide on a massive prevention study.

“But being first sometimes has its disadvantages and because this is prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration wanted us to do everything we could to minimise the exposure of healthy patients to HIV while they were on the trial.

“While we were able to show that the drugs reduce transmission of HIV, the placebo effect was very strong and we had to stop the trial for what’s called ‘futility’: no matter how many patients we kept adding, we wouldn’t be able to tease out the effect of the drug versus the placebo.

“It was frustrating, but we were quite a small company and it was just exhilarating to be on this cutting edge.”

Corner added: “Sadly, the story of AIDS and AIDS prevention vaccines is a really tortured one. We have good treatments now and it’s become much more manageable because it’s detected earlier. We know how to boost immune systems. We know how to treat patients to lower their viral load so transmission is reduced, but there’s still no ‘real prevention’.”

The research efforts weren’t a waste, however, as the testing provided a future framework with a huge clinical trial network that proved to be useful for many other HIV drug testing schemes that followed.

Developed nations have an ethical responsibility to ensure that adequate supplies of vaccines are allocated to low and middle-income countries around the world

The small company was privately held and backed by a venture fund, while also supported by the US drug authorities and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). The BMGF has also been at the forefront of COVID-19 vaccine development and distribution for low and middle-income countries.

Corner’s background in developing protection against diseases has given her a unique perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of the need to support countries with COVID-19 vaccines, Corner said: “Developed nations have an ethical responsibility to ensure that adequate supplies of vaccines are allocated to low and middle-income countries around the world.

“Our lead researcher built one-room, cinder block clinics in Ghana to facilitate getting women into our studies. Global coordination among government and non-government organisations is absolutely essential, so is involving women because they tend to be the primary family caregivers. Money is needed too.

“There is a unique issue with some of the current vaccines in that they have significant cold temperature requirements that present huge distribution problems in, say, sub-Saharan Africa. The newer vaccines, such as from Johnson and Johnson, would probably be more suitable there (they only require fridge temperature). The Johnson and Johnson vaccine also only requires one shot – getting people to walk miles to clinics is a huge burden, so a one-shot protocol is going to be way more successful.”

Corner’s small company later merged with a larger public company, a common strategy for smaller companies in the US, she explained.

Corner said: “As part of that whole transaction, we donated all the international developing world rights to our portfolio. They went to Eastern Virginia Medical School, which is one of the largest groups working in the developing world for drugs. We donated them to make sure that whatever happened when we were a public company, that work could continue.”

She stayed on with the new, larger public business for a year, before leaving to work as a consultant and then starting another company looking at a potential new drug for Alzheimer’s.

Then Corner’s career took another turn, as her husband’s business took off globally she decided to take a step back to focus on their family.

“We had two young daughters and the reality was, if I went back into my world, both of us would be running around crazy busy, running two organisations,” she explained.

“It seemed to me that he’d been such a great support for me while my business was growing that it was good for me to take a step back.”

But that wasn’t the end of Corner’s impact. She helped found three not-for-profit organisations, including The Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs, a support network for women working in high-growth, high-value companies looking for venture capital funds.

Additionally, Corner was on the board of the Philadelphia branch of an education organisation called Breakthrough, helping lower-income children, particularly from ethnic minority backgrounds, to prosper in school and attend good universities.

Corner regularly travels back to the UK, often to watch her beloved Wales compete in the Six Nations rugby tournament. And when she’s not busy with her not-for-profit roles or the rugby, Corner counts rock climbing, learning the piano and playing bridge as her hobbies. The Corners are also actively engaged with the University, hosting a special event in New York for alumni before the COVID-19 pandemic.

From Wales to Manchester to America, it’s been a fascinating journey for Corner – and one that can trace its roots back to her time at the University.

“Manchester turned out to be the most important thing in my life,” she said.