Omar Moukha-Chafiq, Ph.D.

Director of Chemistry

Moukha-Chafiq has almost 20 years of experience performing research at Southern Research. He has been involved as a lead chemist or key team member in research for potential treatments for diseases such as cancer, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, and he initiated and/or contributed to research projects to develop new drugs to fight viruses like HIV, bacteria like tuberculosis, and other diseases. He contributed to discovering two compounds now in phase 1 clinical trials as potential treatments for advanced solid tumors and for acute myeloid leukemia, and he played a role in potential treatments that are under preclinical investigation for several cancers, including pancreatic and colon. Mouka-Chafiq attended the University of Cadi-Ayad in Morocco, in collaboration with the University of Montpellier-France. He has a bachelor’s degree in organic chemistry, as well as a master’s degree and doctorate in nucleosides chemistry. He joined Southern Research in 2002 as a postdoctoral fellow in medicinal chemistry.

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