Dr Anthony Hall

Scientific Advisor

Dr Anthony Hall (Tony) graduated from King’s College London with first class
honours in physiology and pharmacology before going on to qualify as a doctor in
1991 from the Royal Free Hospital London. He joined the pharmaceutical industry in 1994 and has spent many years working on the development of drugs for rare
diseases. Tony founded and grew the first orphan drug specialist CRO/consultancy, during which time he was involved in helping clients conceive innovative orphan drug development programmes in many different therapy areas; the business was later successfully sold to a larger company.

During the past 5 years Tony has worked at Prosensa/Biomarin on the development of antisense oligonucleotides for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and at Mereo BioPharma where, as Therapeutic Area Head Orphan Diseases, he worked on the development of a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of osteogenesis imperfecta. In January 2020 Tony was given the opportunity to become the first Chief Medical Officer at Healx, an AI-powered, patient-inspired company discovering new targets for existing drugs and
translating them towards the clinic for the treatment of rare diseases.

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Tony was one of the key people who conceived the development programme and
clinical trials for the repurposing of nitisinone for the ultra-rare disease alkaptonuria (AKU). The DevelopAKUre Consortium, in which his company participated, was awarded EUR 6 million under the EU’s 7 th Framework Programme and for which a Marketing Authorisation is anticipated.

Tony is Co-founder and Trustee of the rare diseases charity Findacure and sits on
the Scientific Advisory Board of the patient group Duchenne UK. He speaks
regularly at rare diseases conferences and is author of a number of articles and book chapters on orphan drugs; together with Findacure’s Co-founder, he published a book entitled “The Patient Group Handbook: A Practical Guide for Research and Drug Development”.