James McBlane
CAT Member,
Preclinical Assessor,
UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)

After degrees in pharmacology at Dundee and Aston universities, Dr McBlane worked for Wellcome and then at the UK Medicines Control Agency before moving to the Japanese biopharmaceutical company, Chugai, for 10 years, latterly specialising in preclinical development.  He returned to the Licensing Division of the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency where he has spent the last 11 years as a preclinical assessor.  He has worked on >3000 clinical trial applications and hundreds of marketing authorisation applications and has also given advice on development of hundreds of pharmaceutical products.  He has been the UK’s alternate delegate to the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Advanced Therapies (CAT) since 2013.