Dr. Rima Al-awar appointed Director of OICR's Medicinal Chemistry Program
Dr. Rima Al-awar
(Bass Photo Co./G. Abel)
Dr. Rima Al-awar, an accomplished chemist with extensive industry experience, has been recruited to lead a research platform that will turn new scientific discoveries into cancer-fighting drugs. Dr. Tom Hudson, President and Scientific Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), announced her appointment earlier this spring.
Al-awar’s appointment as Director of OICR’s Medicinal Chemistry Platform takes effect July 7. She will oversee activities in OICR’s new medicinal chemistry laboratory, a state-of-the-art facility at the MaRS Centre in Toronto.
“We are very pleased to announce Dr. Al-awar’s appointment and the opening of our medicinal chemistry laboratory,” said Dr. Tom Hudson, OICR’s President and Scientific Director. “Dr. Al-awar’s academic background and industry experience make her particularly well-suited to the OICR Medicinal Chemistry Platform. At OICR we are hoping to make a significant contribution to developing the next generation of cancer-fighting drugs, which means we need a solid chemistry platform led by highly capable people such as Dr. Al-awar.”
Al-awar completed a B.Sc. in chemistry in 1988 and a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry in 1993 from North Carolina State University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since 1995, she has worked with Eli Lilly and company in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she began her career as a Senior Organic Chemist and was promoted to Research Scientist in 2000. She was appointed Head, Discovery Chemistry Research and Technologies in 2002 and more recently served as Head, Chemical Product Research and Development group.
At OICR, she will develop and execute a research plan to design new compounds that can effectively destroy cancer cells while minimizing adverse reactions to cancer patients. Her team will use innovative approaches to design and synthesize new compounds that interact with cancer targets.
“I am very excited to be part of OICR and I plan to focus initially on meeting with other OICR teams to establish a strategy for our group that leverages targets already identified by OICR-supported programs. We will also immediately kick off our recruiting efforts to build a strong Medicinal Chemistry group and establish research priorities to get our first research projects up and running,” explains Dr. Al-awar.
