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Matthew William Davis, MD, RPh (born October 5, 1965) is an American inventor and Biotechnology / Pharmaceutical executive. He is mostly known for his inventions (17 US patents) pertaining to the use of colchicine along with the subsequent FDA approval of Colcrys.

Early life
Davis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Davis matriculated to the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate. He received his Pharmacy Degree from Temple University School of Pharmacy and his Medical Degree from Drexel University College of Medicine. Dr. Davis undertook his surgical training at Brown University and his Urology training at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.

Career
In 1998, after unsuccessful eye surgery strabismus, Dr. Davis was no longer able to perform surgery and entered into the Pharmaceutical Research and Development. At Endo Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Davis worked on the blockbuster drug, Lidoderm. In addition, he worked on opioid pain research, including Percocet and Opana.

In 2000, Dr. Davis worked at the the global dermatology unit of Sanofi (Dermik Laboratories) on the FDA -approved dermal filler Sculptra.

Coclrys
In 2005, Dr. Davis join URL Pharma as Chief Medical Officer. At this time, the FDA started its Unapproved Drugs Initiative. This program was in response to multiple deaths caused by "unapproved products.". After the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was signed into law in June 24, 1938, the FDA had the regulatory authority to mandate drugs by reviewed for safety prior to approval. Drugs approved prior to June 24, 1938 were grandfathered, as long as their manufacturing, ingredients and labeling remained unchanged. In 1962, the Kefauver-Harris Amendment to the FD&C Act gave the FDA the authority to also require efficacy as a condition for drug approval. Drugs approved after June 24, 1938, but before 1962 had a limited time to be reviewed for efficacy in order to remain on the market. This was known as the Drug Efficacy Study Implementation (DESI). As of today there are only a handful of drugs still on the DESI list and in 2006, the FDA stated it was not aware of any grandfathered drugs.

By 2006, URL Pharma decided to research colchicine to see if this unapproved product could gain legal FDA approval. Colchicine was a narrow therapeutic index drug that was implicated in numerous death leading to the FDA forcefully removing injectable colchicine from the US Market. At this time oral colchicine was being used to treat gout attacks. The only placebo control trial conducted using colchicine for acute gout attacks instructed physicians to give colchicine until pain relief or toxicity. All patients on the colchicine arm had adverse events. Despite its toxicity, unapproved oral colchicine was still prescribed using this dosing regimen. In addition, at this time, oral colchicine was also used to treat the often fatal disease Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF).

In the next several years, Dr. Davis invented a new dosing regimen for oral colchicine to treat acute gout attacks with significant safety benefits to patients without reduction off efficacy. In a period of 5 years, he was award 17 US Orange Book listed patents covering colchicine.