Dr. Balázs Lendvai

Head of Richter Department, Semmelweis University; Head of Pharmacology and Drug Safety Research, Gedeon Richter Plc.

Dr. Balázs Lendvai graduated from Semmelweis University as a general practitioner in 1993, after which he worked as a research physician at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. There, he focused on drug discovery with a strong emphasis on neuroscience, and subsequently spent two years in the United States as a postdoctoral researcher introducing modern neuroimaging techniques in neuroscience. In 1998, he obtained a PhD in neuropharmacology, followed by a Hungarian Academy of Sciences doctorate in 2011.

After 16 years of fundamental research, he joined Richter, where he currently leads the Pharmacology and Drug Safety Research Department, overseeing the preclinical biology segment of industrial drug discovery. The department’s activities range from cellular-level research and in vivo animal testing of drug molecules to absorption, distribution studies, toxicology, and human safety prediction in cardiovascular pharmacology. In addition to molecular screening, his team interprets experimental results for human efficacy and conducts translational research. During his tenure at Richter, he and his colleagues have identified several development candidate molecules for CNS indications suitable for human studies, advancing them to the clinical phase.

In 2023, Dr. Lendvai was appointed Head of the newly established Richter Department at Semmelweis University, tasked with transferring industrial drug discovery knowledge to students. He is supported by his family, of whom he is very proud as the father of four sons.