Professor Stuart Walker, BSC, PhD (London), MFPM, FRSC, FiBiol, FRCPath, is an independent Consultant in Pharmaceutical Medicine and Founder of both the Centre for Medicines Research (CMR) International and the Centre for Innovation in Regulatory Science (CIRS).
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND
Professor Walker spent ten years at London University which included lectureships in biochemical pharmacology at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School and in clinical pharmacology at the Cardiothoracic Institute (now the Chest and Heart).
In 1983, he was appointed to the position of Professor of Pharmaceutical Medicine, School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, Cardiff University and he is a Fellow of the School of Pharmacy, London University. In 2018 he was appointed as Professor of Regulatory Science at the University of Hertfordshire
During his academic career, he has lectured extensively throughout Europe, the United States, Japan and the Asia Pacific region, Latin America and the Middle East. Professor Walker is frequently involved in the organization of national and international meetings on key issues that concern the pharmaceutical industry, the regulatory review and patients’ access to medicines.
Professor Walker has been a member of a number of academic, professional and industrial committees and has sat on the board of several scientific journals. He was given the” Drug Information Association” Outstanding Service Award in 2001, received “The Lifetime Achievement Award” from Informa in the same year and more recently the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from TOPRA
During his period in academia, he has taught pharmacy, medical and MBA students, supervised over 25 PhD programmes, co-authored over 350 research papers and reports and co-edited 27 books in the fields of toxicology, drug development, clinical development, regulatory policies, the benefit/risk assessment of medicines & quality decision-making practices.
BUSINESS EXPERIENCE
Professor Walker’s initial business experience resulted from a period of eight years with Glaxo Group Research where he had international responsibility for several clinical research programmes. He pioneered some of the early international clinical development programmes in the 1970s and brought a number of major new products to the market in the therapeutic areas of dermatology, ophthalmology, anaesthetics and asthma.
In 1981, he was invited to establish a new organization, namely the Centre for Medicines Research International, which over a period of 25 years became the leading consultancy in benchmarking drug development for the major international pharmaceutical companies. During this period, his studies enabled companies to improve their productivity, efficiency and decision-making in global drug development. In this role, he had the opportunity to be the invited speaker and also to chair many major international conferences which included the R&D Leaders Conference in the United States, the Economist Conference and the FT Conference in London. His activities can be seen in more detail by an internet search on “Professor Walker/CMR International”.
Professor Walker became the President of CMR International Ltd when he established this organization as an independent company in 2002 (it was previously a division of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry). This contributed to his experience by being responsible for a “for-profit company” with the establishment of a Board and the necessary financial and legal requirements. The company was acquired in 2006 by Thomson Reuters & Professor Walker was then appointed as Vice-President.
INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT CONSULTANCY
In 2002, Professor Walker established the Centre for Medicines Research International Institute for Regulatory Science as a division of CMR International (now known as the Centre for Innovation in Regulatory Science). This organization was a not-for-profit, independent research organization whose major remit was to challenge and, where appropriate change, on the basis of scientific & medical evidence, public policies and regulations thought to be detrimental to efficient global drug development and patients’ access to medicines. Since that time, he has travelled extensively to the Asia Pacific region, frequently visiting & working with the regulatory authorities in China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, and in Latin America, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico and in Africa and the Middle East, South Africa, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon including the Seven Gulf States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE & Yemen. In this capacity, he has consulted and advised the regulatory authorities within the Ministry of Health in these countries on how to improve their efficiency, productivity and decision-making in order to expedite patients’ access to medicines. This has allowed him to make comparative studies of these regulatory authorities and contribute to international conferences such as the Drug Information Association and APEC as well as being an adviser to the World Health Organisation. He was invited to sit on the Ministerial working party in South Africa in 2007/8 to develop the guidelines for a new improved Regulatory authority now known as SAHPRA.
This work over the past ten years in the emerging markets was built on the experience that Professor Walker achieved during the 1990s when the International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) harmonized some 50 guidelines with respect to the requirements for new drug applications between Europe, the United States and Japan. During this period, Professor Walker sat on a number of the working parties representing the Pharmaceutical Industry in Europe in these discussions.
As a result, over the past 40 years, Professor Walker has worked closely with the leading regulatory authorities in the world such as the European Medicines Agency, the USA Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada and the TGA in Australia as well as Swissmedic. Professor Walker is currently an Independent Consultant in Pharmaceutical Medicine as well as continuing to hold a chair at the University of Hertfordshire