Dr Duncan Richards

Climax Professor of Clinical Therapeutics, University of Oxford; Director of the Oxford Clinical Trials Research Unit (OCTRU)

Country: United Kingdom

Specialty/Research area: Early clinical drug development

Duncan Richards trained in medicine at Oxford University and after junior doctor roles in London, he returned to Oxford as Clinical Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacology. His DM thesis research was on a translational model using platelet ion flux to interrogate angiotensin biology and he is author of the Oxford Handbook of Practical Drug Therapy.

Duncan joined GSK in 2003 and has worked in a number of clinical development roles from first in human to file and launch. Latterly Duncan was head of Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Medicine for GSK Research and Director of GSK’s phase 1 and experimental medicine unit in Cambridge (CUC).

Externally he has been a member of the MRC/NIHR EME Board and serves on several committees of the British Pharmacological Society.

Recently appointment to the newly created Climax Professorship of Clinical Therapeutics at the University of Oxford, Duncan will establish a new Centre for Clinical Therapeutics based at the Botnar Research Centre and St Hilda’s College. The Centre, under his leadership, will work with a diverse range of Oxford biomedical researchers and more widely with the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostics industries, in order to drive new drug treatments through decision-making in early phase clinical trials.