Francois-Xavier Lery, PhD WHO

Mr Francois-Xavier Lery obtained his degree in pharmacy from the Paris University. He specialised in medicinal chemistry and obtained his PhD in 1999 from the same university for a thesis prepared in a laboratory from the national centre for scientific research (CNRS).

In 1999 and 2000, he worked in the French Health Products Safety Agency in St Denis near Paris as a pharmaceutical assessor for chemical products.

In 2001, he joined the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare (EDQM) in Strasbourg, France as a scientific officer dealing with Certificates of suitability, quality assessment, coordination of the EDQM GMP inspection programme for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) substance manufacturers and Market Surveillance of EU Centrally Authorised Products.

From 2006 to 2009, he was seconded from the EDQM to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in London as a scientific administrator in charge of the coordination of GMP inspections and of quality defects. In 2008-2009, he was managing the international project between EU, USA and Australia to collaborate on GMP inspection activities.

In 2009 he went back to the EDQM with responsibilities for projects preventing falsification of medicines in the supply chain using traceability (eTACT anti-counterfeiting traceability service for medicines) and API fingerprinting, before being appointed in 2012, Head of Section for Pharmaceutical Care, Consumer Health Protection and Anti-counterfeiting.

In 2018, he joined the Work Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters in Geneva in the position of Coordinator for Technologies, Standards and Norms (TSN), responsible for the standard-setting role of WHO in the area of regulation of medicines and other health products.