{"entity":{"id":"paul-workman","kind":"person","name":"Paul Workman","aka":[],"tldr":"Drug-discovery pioneer who built the ICR's Cancer Therapeutics Unit and championed the 'pharmacological audit trail'.","summary":"Paul Workman is Harrap Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at The Institute of Cancer Research and its former Chief Executive. His specialisms are drug discovery, molecular pharmacology, and kinase and chaperone inhibitors. He led the ICR from 2014 to 2021 and directed its Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit, which discovered or contributed to abiraterone acetate, capivasertib, and HSP90 and PI3K inhibitors, and he championed the pharmacological audit trail as a framework for drug development. His Chemistry & Biology paper on probing the probes set out fitness factors for small-molecule chemical tools. His publications are listed on PubMed.","asOf":"2026-09-08","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Workman_(pharmacologist)","links":[{"label":"PubMed","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Workman%20P%5BAuthor%5D%20drug%20discovery"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["ai-drug-design","kinase-inhibitors"],"targets":[],"drugs":["capivasertib","abiraterone"],"companies":[],"institutions":["icr-london"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"role":"Harrap Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, ICR; former Chief Executive","institutionId":"icr-london","specialisms":["Drug discovery","Molecular pharmacology","Kinase and chaperone inhibitors"],"profiles":[{"label":"PubMed","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Workman%20P%5BAuthor%5D%20drug%20discovery"}],"papers":[{"title":"Probing the probes: fitness factors for small molecule tools","journal":"Chemistry & Biology","year":2010,"doi":"10.1016/j.chembiol.2010.05.013"}]},"route":"/people/paul-workman/","neighbours":{"technology":[{"id":"ai-drug-design","kind":"technology","name":"AI-driven drug & target discovery","route":"/technologies/ai-drug-design/"},{"id":"kinase-inhibitors","kind":"technology","name":"Small-molecule kinase inhibitors","route":"/technologies/kinase-inhibitors/"}],"drug":[{"id":"abiraterone","kind":"drug","name":"Abiraterone acetate","route":"/drugs/abiraterone/"},{"id":"capivasertib","kind":"drug","name":"Capivasertib","route":"/drugs/capivasertib/"}],"institution":[{"id":"icr-london","kind":"institution","name":"The Institute of Cancer Research","route":"/institutions/icr-london/"}],"idea":[{"id":"idea-fund-translational-institutes-gmp","kind":"idea","name":"Regional translational institutes with academic GMP suites and IND teams","route":"/ideas/idea-fund-translational-institutes-gmp/"},{"id":"idea-fund-national-drug-development-office","kind":"idea","name":"Scale up public drug development that takes academic assets to phase 1","route":"/ideas/idea-fund-national-drug-development-office/"}]}}