Collen Masimirembwa

Collen Masimirembwa is the founding President and Chief Scientific Officer of the African Institute of Biomedical Science and Technology (AiBST). He is a biochemical pharmacologist trained at the University of Zimbabwe and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Uppsala University he joined AstraZeneca in Sweden where he worked as a Principal Scientist in DMPK and Bioanalytical Chemistry for 10 years. He has made important innovative contributions in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics (PK) & pharmacogenetics (PGX) research and has published over 80 original research papers in peer-reviewed journals. He has discovered genetic variants of drug metabolizing enzymes which are unique to African populations and could have clinical implications in the safe use of medicines in these populations. To scale up the conduct of genomics research in Africa, he has established a Biobank of African populations and cohorts of patients on different treatment and treatment responses. Collen contributes to international research capacity and capability building through membership of local and international organizations such as IUPHAR and is a Fellow of the Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences and the African Academy of Sciences. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town and at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa.