John Richards

John Richards, DPhil., who started advising Arch Therapeutics in 2016, brings over 30 years of pharmaceutical industry and peptide chemistry experience. Since 2009, he has been Vice President of Global Pharmaceutical Development at The Medicines Company, responsible for CMC development and manufacturing of all the company’s products, including the very large scale program for the peptide-based anticoagulant, Angiomax®. He has extensive experience leading CMC programs which have resulted in the successful filing and approval of drugs and biologics in the United States, European Union and other territories.

Previous roles included Director of Process Development at ImmuLogic Pharmaceutical Corporation, where he was responsible for the design, construction and operation of a multi-train peptide manufacturing facility, and Manager of Peptide Synthesis at UK start-up Cambridge Research Biochemicals and its acquirer ICI Pharmaceuticals, where he contributed to pioneering activities in the 1980's to manufacture cGMP peptides at contract manufacturers for pharmaceutical use.

He earned his doctorate developing protecting groups for use in peptide synthesis at The University of Oxford. While performing his Post-Doctoral work in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK, he was a member of Dr. Robert Sheppard's team that developed the Fmoc-solid phase method of peptide synthesis.