Mark Poulton started his career at Beecham Research Laboratories, in anti-infective discovery programmes where he was involved in a number of discovery projects.  These involved the assessment of in vitro activities of compounds, the development of high throughput screening systems for anti-infective drug discovery and in the isolation and identification of active natural products.  The discovery research involved antibacterial, antimycoplasmal, antiviral and antiparasitic compounds.

After 17 years in discovery, Mark moved into Clinical Research where he worked as a global Programme Manager within pharmaceutical companies.  In this role, Mark worked for a number of different pharmaceutical companies and managed trials in many therapeutic areas on a global basis.  Not only was this study management, but also involved monitoring activities. Mark has performed many different trial types from first-in-man through to late Phase IV studies. Mark has been involved in all aspects of research from development planning, study start-up and management to reporting and submitting to authorities.

After 13 years in clinical research Mark moved into clinical quality by joining the MHRA, as a GCP Inspector. He was involved in all aspects of GCP inspection in the UK and overseas and also managed a number of GCP Symposia. Mark was also part of the Inspectorate Training group, and arranged training programmes for inspectors to broaden knowledge and expertise.  In October 2011, after 5 years at the MHRA, Mark joined ADAMAS Consulting where he was involved in a number of different audit types.  Here he performed most aspects of GCP quality, GLP laboratory audits and GMP audits of solid dose tablet formulation IMP manufacturing.

After 5 years in consulting, Mark returned to the pharmaceutical industry by joining Clovis Oncology. Here he was Senior Manager GCP QA and had a global role managing and overseeing QA GCP for the company.  After 18 months, Mark made the decision to go freelance and set up Poulton Quality Solutions Ltd in January 2019.

Mark has presented at a large number of national and international meetings, conferences and
symposia and was asked to be the key note speaker at an international electronic data systems user group meeting.

Mark has a BSc(Hons) in Applied Biology, specialising in Microbiology and is a member of Research Quality Assurance (RQA).