WorkmanPaul The Institute of Cancer ResearchUnited Kingdom

Professor Paul Workman is a leading cancer research scientist known for pioneering many innovative cancer drugs and personalised medicines targeted at specific molecular abnormalities, a strategy he terms ‘drugging the cancer genome’. He also introduced the ‘Pharmacological Audit Trail’, a now widely-used method employing biomarkers for informed drug development decisions. Paul’s multidisciplinary drug discovery research has closely integrated chemical biology approaches and his teams have discovered multiple clinical candidates and chemical probes for protein and lipid kinases and molecular chaperones like Hsp90. Of note he was instrumental in the discovery of the approved EGFR inhibitor gefitinib (for EGFR mutant non small cell lung cancer) and the approved AKT inhibitor capivasertib (for ER-positive breast cancer). With experience in academia, biotech and pharma, Paul has pioneered the non-profit, academic team science model for drug discovery. Notably, he built and directed the CRUK Cancer Therapeutics Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London from 1997 to 2016, where he was pivotal in the discovery of 21 drug candidates, 13 of which entered clinical trials, including capivasertib which was approved for breast cancer. From 2014-21, Paul also served as Chief Executive and President of ICR. In addition, Paul was a Co-Founder of the biotech companies Chroma Therapeutics and Piramed Pharma, and he is Science Partner at Nextech Invest. Paul has won numerous awards and fellowships. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (the UK’s national academy of science), the Academy of Medical Sciences (the UK’s national academy of medicine) and the Royal Society of Chemistry and he is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Last year, Paul was named as the 2024 International Chemical Biology Society Global Lectureship Awardee.