Dr. Larry Lesko
personal info
Dr. Lesko is currently Clinical Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida (UF) College of Pharmacy in Lake Nona, Florida. He is the Founding Director of the UF Center for Pharmacometrics and Systems Pharmacology which was established in July 2011 on the Lake Nona (aka Medical City) campus. Prior to joining UF, Dr. Lesko was the Director of the Office of Clinical Pharmacology (OCP) in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) between 1995 and 2011. During his tenure as OCP Director, Dr. Lesko chaired the clinical pharmacology coordinating subcommittee under the medical policy council. He established several regulatory programs at FDA including the Division of Pharmacometrics and Mechanistic Drug Safety programs in OCP, and the Voluntary Genomics Data Submission program in CDER. He was also author or co-author of numerous clinical pharmacology guidances dealing with exposure-response relationships, studies supporting dosing in special populations and clinical pharmacogenomics. Dr. Lesko has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He has received the ASCPT’s Rawls-Palmer Progress in Medicine award (2007) and Gary Neil Prize for Innovation in Drug Development (2011), the Coriell Scientific Leadership Award for Personalized Medicine (2010) and the University of North Carolina Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy Award for Clinical Service (2007). Dr. Lesko served as President of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology (ACCP) from 2004 to 2006 and received the Nathanial B. Kwit Distinguished Service Award for Clinical Pharmacology (2007). He is a Fellow in AAPS, the Japanese Society for the Study of Xenobiotics, and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Dr. Lesko was Board Certified in Applied Pharmacology from the American Board of Clinical Pharmacology (1991) and is a Registered Pharmacist in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Texas.