Fellow

Professor Khondaker Miraz Rahman

(Expatriate Fellow, 2023)

Khondaker Miraz Rahman is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the School of Cancer &
Pharmaceutical Sciences at King’s College London. He also serves as the Director of MRC
Industrial CASE PhD Programmes at King’s College London and leads the Antimicrobial
Research Theme there. He earned his B.Pharm. (Hons) and M.Pharm. (research) degrees
from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Dhaka in 1996 and 1999, respectively,
securing the first-class first position in both examinations. After working for three years in the
industry, he returned to academia and joined Dhaka University as a Lecturer in Pharmaceutical
Chemistry in 2003 and was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2005. He was awarded a
Commonwealth Scholarship in 2005 and obtained his Ph.D. in synthetic medicinal chemistry
from the School of Pharmacy (currently UCL School of Pharmacy) in 2008. He completed his
post-doctoral training with the Cancer Research UK Gene Targeted Drug Discovery Research
group from 2008 to 2012 and joined King’s College London as a Lecturer in 2012. He was
subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2015, to Reader in Medicinal Chemistry in 2018,
and to his current position as Professor and Chair in Medicinal Chemistry in 2021. His research focuses on the application of advanced computational chemistry, synthetic medicinal
chemistry, and chemical biology techniques to design, synthesize, and evaluate novel druglike
chemical scaffolds for use as anticancer and anti-infective agents.

His research group has pioneered new classes of efflux-resistant antibiotics, antifungal agents
and payloads for antibody drug conjugates, currently undergoing commercialization. With 16
patents to his name as an inventor, Rahman's lab is focused on taking laboratory innovations
to the bedside to have a real-life impact. He has experience in both early and late-stage drug
discovery and translational research. He has co-founded several biotech companies, including
Transcriptogen Ltd, focusing on oncology; Pheon Therapeutics, specializing in antibody-drug
conjugates (ADCs); and Necobiotix Ltd, an antibiotic company.