In the Queen's Birthday Honours list of 2019, Osbourn was awarded the Order of the British Empire medal for services to "Human Monoclonal Antibody Drug Research and Development and Biotechnology".
[6] She went on to complete a PhD degree at the John Innes Centre for Plant Science Research in Norwich, which resulted in the publication of Evidence that nucleocapsid disassembly and a later step in virus replication are inhibited in transgenic tobacco protoplasts expressing TMV coat protein.
[7] Following this, she completed a post-doctoral position at Rutgers University, New Jersey, United States, undertaking research directed towards clarification of the sequence elements responsible for the translational enhancement effect conferred by the 5' untranslated region of Tobacco Mosaic Virus known as omega.
[8] Osbourn then moved into medical research through a British Heart Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Department of Medicine at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.
[citation needed] In 2014 Osbourn was elected to join the board of the BioIndustry Association, becoming Chair in 2016;[1] and in this role she has been working to support the development of the biotechnology sector in the UK.
At the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, on Tuesday 13 May 2014, she gave evidence on behalf of AstraZeneca as it faced a potential takeover from Pfizer.
[48] Osbourn has also has previously served as a Member of the UK Medical Research Council Industry Grant Award Assessment Panel.
Osbourn says of this time, "There was a cohort of really able intellect in Cambridge – in CAT and other companies, in the MRC LMB and in the University – and what happened was a condensation of that focus… Once we decided to make phage display work, we set some really tough goals and then just got on with it.