Dr Derek O'Hagan | Global Head of Vaccine Chemistry and Formulation Research
GSK Vaccines

Derek O’Hagan, BPharm, MRPharmS, PhD, is a VP and the Global Head of Vaccine Chemistry and Formulation Research for Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, based in Cambridge, MA. He manages research teams both in Cambridge and Siena, Italy. He is a qualified pharmacist from the UK, and a former academic researcher, who has worked on vaccine delivery in the industry since 1993. He was formerly a Lecturer in Drug Delivery at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK, and received research funding from the World Health Organization, The Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. He was recruited into the US in 1993, and moved to progress basic research into clinical evaluation. He subsequently worked on several vaccine delivery systems that were evaluated in the clinic, including novel adjuvants, nucleic acid vaccines and needle free vaccines. In the mid 1990’s, he worked on the novel emulsion adjuvant MF59, which is now included in a licensed flu vaccine in more than 40 countries and is progressing towards licensure in the US. He is the author of >120 original research publications, >60 book chapters and reviews and is a named inventor on >50 filed patents. He was awarded the Conference Science medal of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1997, and the Young Investigator Research Achievement Award of the Controlled Release Society in 1999. He was also named as the ‘most inventive scientist’ in Chiron in 2004 and was the lead author on the most cited paper in ‘Vaccine’ 2008-10. He has served on the Board of Scientific Advisors for the Controlled Release Society and is a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists.