Matthew Hegreness

Matthew Hegreness is an associate in the firm’s Washington, DC office, specializing in the regulation of food, pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, and cosmetics.  He counsels clients on compliance with state and federal regulatory regimes, especially those of the Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission.  Mr. Hegreness also provides advice and regulatory due diligence to support the corporate transactions and securities filings of the firm’s life sciences clients.  Mr. Hegreness’s legal counsel reflects a strong grasp of underlying scientific issues, developed during his years as a research biologist.

Mr. Hegreness graduated from Yale Law School, where he was the editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics.  The Yale faculty awarded him three prizes for his scholarship, including a prize for the best student contribution to the Yale Law Journal.  Prior to law school, Mr. Hegreness was a researcher at Harvard Medical School, where he studied drug interactions, antibiotic resistance, and the evolution of cancer.  His research has been published in some of the world’s top scientific journals, including Science, Nature Genetics, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  These findings have been cited hundreds of times in subsequent peer-reviewed publications.

Mr. Hegreness is a member of the California Bar.  He is currently not admitted in the District of Columbia but is supervised by principals of the firm.

Representative Matters

• Advised companies on the labeling and advertising of food, dietary supplements, medical devices, and cosmetics.
• Counseled businesses on issues of drug and medical device approval, and on Hatch-Waxman exclusivity strategies.
• Advised companies on issues of scientific substantiation of advertising claims, including evaluation of clinical trials.
• Advised pharmaceutical trade association on novel questions of state and federal law.
• Represented client in FTC administrative proceedings related to the advertising of food and dietary supplements.

Previous Experience

• Member of the Yale Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic; co-wrote two merit briefs and a petition of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court (2011-2012).
• Scientific researcher and Ph.D. student at Harvard in the laboratories of systems biologist Roy Kishony and population geneticist Daniel Hartl (2003-2008).

Publications and Speeches

• "FDA Releases Proposed Rule for Hazard Analysis and Risk-Based Preventive Controls and Current Good Manufacturing Practices for Human Food," Covington E-Alert (1/10/2013), Co-Author
• "An Organic Law Theory of the Fourteenth Amendment: The Northwest Ordinance as the Source of Rights, Privileges, and Immunities," 120 Yale L.J. 1820 (2011), Author
• "Drug Interactions and the Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance," 7 Nature Rev. Microbiology 460 (2009), Co-Author