Meet Our Leadership Team • Clerkenwell Health
Clerkenwell Health enters the UK market with the leadership of Tom McDonald as its Chief Executive Officer and Dr Henry Fisher as its Chief Scientific Officer.
Commenting on the needs of the industry, Tom McDonald said, "The increased interest in psychedelics as medicines has been fantastic to see over the past two years but to make these treatments a reality, the industry as a whole needs to prioritize the development of reliable clinical data over the coming years. We are very excited to be in a position to help move the industry forward by helping our clients design and implement patient-centred trials that will accelerate patients' access to these exciting treatments".
After a decade of consulting for pharmaceutical companies at Accenture and IQVIA with a focus on patient-centricity, real world evidence trials and health tech, Tom has transitioned into the psychedelic and medical cannabis sectors. He has spent two years at Hanway Associates, a medical cannabis focused consultancy, advising on business plans and operations for tens of companies in the emerging European medical cannabis sector whilst leading the consulting team there.
Dr Henry Fisher, the CSO of Clerkenwell Health, is a Co-founder and CSO at Hanway Associates, where he advises clients on R&D strategy, IP generation, and research operations. Formerly, he was the Health Policy Director at Volteface, which is a drug policy think tank, and the Communications Officer at The Beckley Foundation. Henry holds a DPhil from Oxford where he studied delivery methods for psychoactive drugs.
“Our aim is to enable a new gold standard of clinical research into psychedelic-assisted therapies. In addition to the development of new treatments, the potential for improving service delivery, trial designs and the methods of monitoring and data acquisition present a wealth of innovation opportunities we fully intend to be at the heart of creating. We cannot wait to pioneer innovation in this research space, which will benefit not only those companies who choose to work with us as clients but will also help to elevate the sector as a whole, through our stated aims of collaborative research,” said Clerkenwell Health CSO Dr Henry Fisher.
Tom McDonald, Clerkenwell Health CEO added, "We want Clerkenwell to become the one-stop shop for anyone interested in running clinical trials that utilise psychedelic compounds. To make this a reality we are developing a custom-built facility that caters to the 'setting' aspect unanimously understood as important to positive psychedelic experiences. Additionally, over the course of this year, we will continue building our leading team of commercial and academic experts to best serve our clients and their patients”.
About Clerkenwell Health
Clerkenwell Health is an innovative mental health company offering clinical research support services and psychedelic-assisted therapies. We are the first and only European psychedelic specialist CRO - offering strategic, regulatory and operational support to clients from pre-clinical to phase III studies. Our focus is on building evidence, broadening patient accessibility and putting the patient at the centre of everything we do.