Funding medical trials leads to CBE award
Pledging millions of pounds towards a number of ground-breaking clinical trials over the last two decades has seen islander Jon Moulton receive a CBE in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours.
More than £52m. has been committed by Mr Moulton through his charity The Jon Moulton Charity Trust – previously the J P Moulton Charitable Foundation – which has enabled more than 160 clinical trials to be conducted in a range of therapy areas, including women’s health, oncology and multiple sclerosis.
Mr Moulton, from Stoke-on-Trent, suffered ill health in childhood, which inspired his commitment to medicine in later life. He spent his career in private equity investment, and was managing partner of firms including Alchemy Partners and Better Capital.
He had spells working in London and New York, before moving to Guernsey 13 years ago.
He found out about his honour just over three weeks ago after receiving a phone call from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who informed him that he had been nominated for the accolade by senior academics and medics.
‘It was obviously very unexpected as you don’t expect to pick up the phone with the Prime Minister on the other end,’ he said.
‘We discovered that we had some commonality – he used to work for a bloke who worked for me.’
He said receiving the honour felt ‘quite gratifying’, adding that since news of his honour became public he had been congratulated by many people via a number of ‘very friendly’ emails.
‘Nobody has said it was a really bad thing so that’s good,’ he joked.
‘A background in private equity and living in Guernsey are not necessarily the number one and number two causes they look for in handing out awards.’
He said he did not yet know when or where he would receive his honour, but that it would be sometime in the next few months.
In terms of his charity’s work over the years, he was particularly proud of two separate pieces of research involving tranexamic acid – known as TXA – and a disease called polycystic ovarian syndrome.
‘We funded a clinical trial to see if TXA would reduce the amount of bleeding in people with trauma or surgical wounds, and it’s been extremely successful.
‘Now, if you’re somebody who’s injured, the first thing you get is morphine, the second thing is TXA.
‘Polycystic ovarian syndrome makes life miserable for roughly one in 300 females in the UK.
‘We funded a trial for a treatment and now we have what appears to be a cure.
‘This will massively improve the lives of quite a lot of people.’
