David Cavalla has 35 years experience in various senior scientific and commercial roles within the pharmaceutical industry. He is currently involved with a number of biotech companies at Board level. Previously he was founder and CEO of Arachnova Ltd, a company focused on therapeutic switching; previous affiliations included Glaxo Group Research Ltd and Napp Research Centre.

He is author of Modern Strategy for Pharmaceutical R&D — Towards the Virtual Research Centre, and Off-Label Prescribing: Justifying Unapproved Medicine and editor of Drug Repurposing (RSC). He is one of the first advocates of drug repurposing, and has used this strategy to create three first-in-class developmental products to have successfully passed human proof of concept clinical stages. He frequently contributes articles on pharmaceutical strategy and is on the editorial board of Drug Discovery Today. Formerly he was Chairman of the Society for Medicines Research. He obtained a first degree and PhD at Cambridge University and spent two years as a visiting Fellow at the NIMH, Washington, DC. He is author/inventor of over 80 published papers and patents.

Latest News

Covid-19: Numedicus is pleased to announce, on behalf of its associated company Exvastat, the start of a Phase II trial in severe Covid-19 patients See here for more details

Blog
What you pay is what you get

As the crisis in anti-infective medicine resistance draws closer, the fundamental problems with the existing model for incentivisation of antibiotic research grow ever clearer. Are there issues here with relevance [...]

28
Nov
Rett Syndrome treatment receives Orphan Designation

Numedicus is pleased to announce that its treatment for Rett Syndrome, licensed to AMO Pharma has successfully received Orphan Drug designation. Full details are found here. [...]

12
Jul
License and collaboration deal with AMO Pharma

Numedicus is pleased to announce the licensing of two key pieces of intellectual property, and associated know-how, around the use of an existing glutamate modulator, for the treatment of Rett [...]

26
Jul
Cachexia development enters new phase

The development of espindolol for the treatment of cancer cachexia entered a new phase this month, with the formation of a new spin out company Actimed Therapeutics. [...]

18
Jul
The Empowerment of the Rare Disease Patient

The stakeholders in healthcare in the developed world are conventionally divided into three ‘P’ words: patients, payers and pharmaceutical companies. In addition, there are a couple of other more minor [...]

06
Jun
Value and cost-based pricing
May 27, 2014

David Grainger wrote recently on his DrugBaron blog about the pricing of pharmaceuticals. It is an intelligent piece, yet if I may I would like to improve upon it. [...]

First-in-class new drug for cachexia
November 12, 2013

Numedicus is please to note the report from PsiOxus, on the outcome of a Phase II trial of MT-102, or s-pindolol, in cancer cachexia. David Cavalla is inventor of this [...]

We need better evidence as a basis for off-label prescriptions
September 15, 2013

The practice of off-label prescription poses a significant issue for the advocates of evidence-based medicine, given that this area is particularly poorly served by data. [...]