Miraz Rahman is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at King’s College London, with extensive expertise in both early- and late-stage drug discovery. He graduated as a pharmacist from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1996. After three years in the industry, he transitioned to academia, completed his PhD in synthetic medicinal chemistry at the London School of Pharmacy (now UCL School of Pharmacy), and worked as a CRUK Research Fellow for three years. In 2012, he joined King’s College London as a Lecturer and was subsequently promoted to Chair in Medicinal Chemistry in 2021. He currently serves as Head of the Drug Discovery Research Division at King’s College London. Additionally, he is the Antimicrobial Research Theme Lead and Director of the MRC DTP iCASE Programme, one of the largest UKRI-funded industrial PhD programmes in the UK.
His research focuses on the application of advanced computational chemistry, synthetic medicinal chemistry, and chemical biology techniques to design, synthesize, and evaluate novel drug-like chemical scaffolds as anticancer and antimicrobial agents. Miraz is committed to translating innovative laboratory research into commercialization and patient care. He holds 22 patents as an inventor and has co-founded several university spin-out companies, including Pheon Therapeutics, a clinical-stage company developing first-in-class antibody-drug conjugates for the treatment of solid tumours, and Aethox Therapeutics which is taking a small-molecule immunotherapy developed in his lab that can boost existing chemotherapy to clinical trial. The Rahman laboratory is located on the 5th floor of the Franklin Wilkins Building at King’s College London and is funded by grants from industry, charities and research councils.