Dr K Miraz Rahman (KMR) is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Science, KCL, and the Antimicrobial Research Theme Lead of Institute of Pharmaceutical Science. After working three years in the industry as a research & development pharmacist, he went back to academia and obtained his PhD from the UCL School of Pharmacy. He joined the CRUK Drug Discovery Group at the School of Pharmacy in July 2009 and worked as the Team Leader of the Gene Targeting Drug Design Research group of UCL for three years. He was appointed as a Lecturer at KCL in 2012 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2015, and to Reader in Medicinal Chemistry in 2018. KMR’s research activities are focused on the application of advanced computational chemistry, synthetic medicinal chemistry and chemical biology techniques to the design, synthesis and evaluation of novel drug-like chemical scaffolds as anticancer and anti-infective agents. He has been collaborating with Public Health England to develop chemical tools to study antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and discover new ways to target multiple drug-resistant pathogens. He has used a combination of homology modelling and advanced computational calculations to study bacterial efflux pumps and has invented a new class of antibiotic resistance breakers (ARBs) that are currently being commercialised. KMR is author/co-author of over 90 research publications, inventor on 15 patents and has more than 15 years’ research experience in medicinal chemistry and biophysical techniques. 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. He has experience in early and late-stage drug discovery, and translational research, co-founding oncology biotech companies Transcriptogen Ltd (2013) and Femtogenix Ltd (2015), and an antibiotic discovery company Necobiotix in 2020.

Application of synthetic medicinal chemistry and chemical biology techniques to the design, synthesis and evaluation of novel anticancer and antibacterial agents. 

Current Projects

• Antibiotic Resistance Breaker (ARB) technology.

• Development of new classes of antibacterial agents against multidrug-resistant pathogens.

• Development of new generation antifungal agents.

• Development of chemoresistance breakers against cancer stem cells.

• Development of Anticancer Agents (DNA Interactive and PROTAC).

• Development of chemical tools (e.g., EPI, membrane probes, enzyme inhibitors etc.) to study antimicrobial resistance.

• Development of orthosteric biased antagonists to P2Y1 for anti-inflammatory therapy.

• The exploitation of anaplerotic node as a therapeutic target against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

• Development of new antibiofilm agents through repurposing of existing licensed drugs.

• Identification of New Therapeutic Combinations for Clinical Trial against COVID-19 Through Repurposing of Drugs with Known Safety Profile.

• Development of a Gram-negative membrane penetration rule.

• Mechanistic evaluation of natural products from plant origin.