INVESTING Women, which describes itself as Scotland’s first and only female angel investor group, has appointed oil services entrepreneur Lorraine Porter to the board of biotechnology company TC BioPharm.

Ms Porter has become a non-executive director of Lanarkshire-based TC BioPharm as the company prepares to start its first treatment of UK patients with melanoma, lung and kidney cancers.

Investing Women recently led a £1.2 million funding round, which TC BioPharm completed ahead of the expected start next month of clinical studies into the use of its Immunicell product.

The company says this uses patients’ own cells grown in culture to target a wide-variety of different cancers and has potential to target major viral infections such as Ebola.

A founder of the STATS pipeline engineering business, Ms Porter said TC she was looking forward to working with TC BioPharm at a key stage in the company’s development.

She said the company has a first-class highly committed management team who are working on a project which will impact on improving the quality of life for the most deserving of patients.

The businesswoman added: “ Investing Women’s model was hugely appealing to me as a potential investor as it matched my desire to put years of experience in building a successful business into providing hands-on support and encouragement to smaller start-ups.”

Investing Woman backed TC BioPharm after a founder of that firm, Angela Scott, made a pitch for support at one of the education days the angel group holds with Scottish Government support.

She said Investing Women’s two day programme greatly helped TC BioPharm to understand how an angel investment could help the firm move to the next stage of its development.