Anthony Ridgway

Dr. Ridgway retired from Health Canada (HC) in May 2020. After completing his Ph.D. at McGill University in Montréal, he moved to post-doctoral studies and 5 years as Assistant Professor at the University of Western Ontario pursuing research on oncogenes, retroviral & lentiviral regulatory genes, and inducible expression vectors. He joined HC’s Bureau of Biologics in 1991 and, in 1999, became Manager of the Biotherapeutics Division with responsibility for regulation of a wide range of biologics and radiopharmaceuticals. In 2004, during creation of the Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate (renamed Biologic and Radiopharmaceutical Drugs Directorate in 2020) he transformed his division into three new divisions and became The Senior Regulatory Scientist, Office of the Director, Centre for Evaluation of Radiopharmaceuticals and Biotherapeutics (CERB). This role included advisory responsibilities and retention of managerial responsibility for the evaluation of product quality for radiopharmaceuticals, gene therapy products and many cell therapy products. For 18 months, extending from 2016 into 2018, he served as Acting Director of CERB.

He has been extensively involved in international harmonization activities, interacting with other regulatory agencies, the WHO, and other non-commercial and commercial entities. He first represented HC at the ICH in 1993 and repeated such activity frequently, serving on EWGs addressing the quality of biotechnology products. He was the HC Topic Lead for three ICH Considerations and eight ICH Guidelines, the last being ICH-Q12 on product lifecycle management. From 2000 to 2020, he served four, 5-year terms on USP Committees of Experts; two for “Cell, Gene and Tissue Therapies” followed by two for “General Chapters – Biological Analysis”. During his 29-year career with Health Canada he was a frequently requested panelist and speaker at scientific conferences, and other events, addressing many aspects of the manufacturing and regulation of biotherapeutics.