Meet our Founder
Kevin Lanzo, PharmD
Founder & CEO
As founder of Pharmaka Clinical Consulting, Kevin supports the development of novel psychiatric treatments for mental health disorders. Pharmaka has taken sites through the full activation process: DEA Schedule I registration, sponsor alignment, dosing room compliance, staff credentialing, and site-specific operating procedures, from first conversation to first patient enrolled.
Kevin also serves as a board member of the Psychedelic Pharmacists Association, a non-profit professional association he co-founded and formerly served as president of, and as Executive-in-Residence at Lionheart Ventures, a mental health therapeutics-focused venture capital firm. He holds active working relationships with sponsors and CROs currently placing psychedelic studies.
As a pharmacist, Kevin advocates for the value of the pharmacy profession as drug experts, and for the cost-effective, sustainable rollout of effective psychiatric medicines. He has presented on harm reduction, diversity in clinical trials, experiential treatment, and reciprocity to audiences across clinical, industry, and academic settings.
Kevin is a pharmacist and clinical scientist specializing in the clinical effects of psychoactive medicines. He brings five years of pharmaceutical industry experience at Roche/Genentech, where he worked in late-stage clinical development and built the company's internal psychedelic clinical development program, investigating psychedelics and psychoplastogens as novel psychiatric medications. He also completed a two-year postdoctoral industry fellowship in partnership with Rutgers University, and is a graduate of the UNC Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
Before founding Pharmaka, Kevin spent five years as a clinical scientist at Genentech, working in late-stage drug development across neuroscience and psychiatry. He designed and operated global Phase II and Phase III clinical trials, and built Genentech's internal psychedelic clinical development program from the ground up.
That work put him on the inside of a problem most sponsors were quietly struggling with: there weren't enough qualified sites to run Schedule I psychedelic trials. Sponsors had compounds ready to test. Sites didn't have the licensure, the protocols, or the staff training to take them on.
Kevin founded Pharmaka to close that gap directly, site by site.
Where Pharmaka stands today
Pharmaka has taken sites through the full activation process: DEA Schedule I registration, sponsor alignment, dosing room compliance, staff credentialing, and site-specific operating procedures, from first conversation to first patient enrolled.
Kevin also serves as co-founder and board member of the Psychedelic Pharmacists Association, and as Executive-in-Residence at Lionheart Ventures, a mental health therapeutics-focused venture capital firm. He holds active working relationships with sponsors and CROs currently placing psychedelic studies.
Legal psychedelic medicine, developed through rigorous clinical research and brought to patients through the FDA approval pathway, is the most promising path to better mental healthcare available right now. Realizing that promise takes real infrastructure: licensed sites, trained staff, and operating procedures that hold up to inspection.
Pharmaka builds that infrastructure.
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