When Andy Millar was sacked from his top job at British Biotech last summer for whistleblowing, his future looked decidedly bleak.

He had three young children to support and faced a mounting legal bill to fight the company's application for damages.

Now he has found his perfect job, as chief executive of Oxford University spin-off company Oxford Gene Technology, whose founder, Prof Ed Southern, shares Dr Millar's views about the biotech industry.

Dr Millar, 45, believes biotech companies should tell the truth about the prospects of their discoveries and concentrate on producing worthwhile results rather than placating investors. He is also determined that his new company will not pay high salaries or build prestigious premises until the profits justify it.

Prof Southern, who has developed DNA "chips" that reproduce genetic information in miniature, just as silicon chips carry digital information in computers, said he contacted Dr Millar after hearing his views. Prof Southern said: "I am worried that venture capitalists may set the agenda for companies, rather than the science, so that was one reason why I approached Dr Millar.

"The other reason was that he had the right background in the pharmaceutical industry and the right personal qualities." Prof Southern's company has the luxury of a £1m kitty from licence fees earned by his discovery, so it has no need to raise funds from investors.

Dr Millar will be heading the company's bid to miniaturise DNA sequences to create powerful experimental tools for biological, medical and pharmaceutical research.

He was clinical research director of British Biotech for six years until he went privately to one of its leading shareholders, Perpetual, to raise his concern that the company was misleading the market about the prospects of its drugs research.

British Biotech suspended him and issued a press release rebutting his allegations. The two sides waged a war of words, the stock market took fright and the company's share price plummeted.

British Biotech then sacked him and sued him for damages. He was ostracised by the biotech industry and only found work by acting for overseas companies as a consultant. He said: "I couldn't get work in this country and I thought that I might have to move, but I didn't want to. "Oxfordshire is my home, I was born in the Radcliffe Infirmary and brought up in Benson."

He believes that subsequent events have vindicated his actions. The company paid him an undisclosed sum - believed to be about £200,000 - to settle his counter-claim for unfair dismissal and libel.

Story date: Tuesday 02 November

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