David Cavalla has 35 years experience in various senior scientific and commercial roles within the pharmaceutical industry. He is currently Executive chairman of Serenatis Bio Ltd, a company focussed on the developmend ot new drugs for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Previously he was founder and CEO of Arachnova Ltd, a company focused on therapeutic switching, and of Exvastat, which undertook clinical research of kinase inhibitors in ARDS; 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.