John Henderson
President, FuturePharm LLC

BELS: Could you tell us about your early years in the UK?

JOHN HENDERSON: I grew up in Scotland and went on to Edinburgh University to study physiology then medicine. After six years in academic medicine in Edinburgh, I began to appreciate the limited job satisfaction that a career in the NHS would offer. With the NHS even then showing signs of ill-health, life as a consultant was not what I wanted for myself or my family. When plans to work as a physician in Canada fell through, I happened upon an advertisement for an opportunity within Pfizer Central Research in the UK for a research physician. And the rest, as they say, is history!

BELS: Would you tell us a little more about your professional experience, as well as how and when you first came to North America?

JH: I spent some 16 years with Pfizer in the UK, ultimately becoming VP in charge of European clinical research and regulatory affairs. I worked with some of the company's most successful drugs during that time, including Norvasc, Diflucan, Zoloft, Zithromax and Cardura. Then, in 1991, I was moved by the company to Japan to head up the preclinical and clinical development group there, before eventually being moved to the US headquarters in New York in 1993. I became the SVP Medical Global, reporting initially directly to the Vice-Chairman and subsequently to the company's Head of Research. As Pfizer began to merge with other companies and grow, my role within the company changed with positions of responsibility at different times for Europe, the USA and for International. When the Warner-Lambert merger came along, I saw the opportunity to accept a package and accelerate the next stage of my life.

BELS: What are you doing right now?

JH: With kids long having flown the coop, my wife and I decided to move down to Hilton Head in South Carolina to enjoy the warmer climate and indulge a passion for golf. However, I also understood that I wanted to continue to operate within the life science marketplace, and I formed a consultancy called FuturePharm LLC to provide development consultancy to companies. Though you are somewhat at the beck and call of the companies that are your clients, it does afford the chance to be choosy about who you work with and to look for exciting environments.

BELS: Do you get back to the UK much, and what are your impressions of the UK life science scene?

JH: I still have family back in the UK but am not there terribly often. My impression is that there remains a tremendous body of knowledge in the UK but some of the brightest minds still find their way to North America. Despite efforts to improve the overall climate in the UK, it still seems to be a more difficult environment than here. There still seems to a big gap in understanding how to operate in a US environment.

BELS: What attracted to you to take a participatory interest in BELS?

JH: There is a tremendous fund of expertise to be tapped into within the expat community that could be put to good use in the UK. For instance, my experience in New York with Pfizer gave me a much better sense of the regulatory and development issues of the marketplace here as well as in Europe, an experience that could lead me to advise on development issues on both sides of the Atlantic. However, I believe that much of the expertise here is still not necessarily well connected to the UK. In that respect, I feel that BELS can provide an admirable vehicle for matching various UK needs to the expertise here-rather than what has been a largely random exercise to date.