Senior Consultant

David Compton, PhD, DABT

Dr. David Compton is a board-certified toxicologist with over 30 years of combined academic, CRO, and pharmaceutical experience, including GLP study directing, safety pharmacology, toxicology, and nonclinical drug development. He began his career as an Assistant/Associate Professor at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV), part of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). He then transitioned to industry, where he has spent over 25 years in various positions at Huntingdon Life Sciences (3 years), Schering-Plough Research Institute (6 years), Sanofi (15 years), and PTC Therapeutics (3 years).

While Dave has served as both a GLP Study Director and Project Team Toxicologist, he is also a recognized subject matter expert in gene therapy and abuse liability. He has experience in developing and achieving marketing approval for gene therapy programs and has published four gene therapy manuscripts (one as first author) between 2020 and 2023.

Dave has extensive experience in nonclinical abuse liability assessment, including serving as the corporate subject matter expert for a large pharmaceutical company, being a founding member of the Cross-Company Abuse Liability Council (CCALC), and interacting with the FDA Controlled Substance Staff (CSS). He was also the editor of the 2015 industry-oriented book Nonclinical Assessment of Abuse Potential for New Pharmaceuticals.

As part of his service in multiple scientific organizations, Dave notably served as past president of the American College of Toxicology (ACT).