Munir Pirmohamed

He attended the former St Paul’s School and Peterborough Technical College.[1]

Pirmohamed studied medicine at the University of Liverpool from 1980 to 1985.[2] He was awarded a PhD in pharmacology in 1993, and began working as a consultant physician at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in 1996.[3] Pirmohamed gained the position of Personal Chair in Clinical Pharmacology at The University of Liverpool in 2001. [3] He went on to become the NHS Chair of Pharmacogenetics in 2007 and the David Weatherall Chair of Medicine at the University of Liverpool in 2013.[4] He was a member of the Commission on Human Medicines and Chair of its Pharmacovigilance Expert Advisory Group from 2005 to 2020 and was appointed Chair of the Commission in 2021,[5]

He is Director of the Centre for Drug Safety Science, Director of the Wolfson Centre of Personalised Medicine, [6] and Director of the MRC Clinical Pharmacology Training Scheme, [7] all at the University of Liverpool. In addition, he is Director of HDR North, part of HDR UK.[8]

Alongside these responsibilities, Pirmohamed is a Non-Executive Director for NHS England/Improvement,[9] a member of the governing council of the Medical Research Council,[10] a medical trustee for the British Heart Foundation,[11] and was President of the British Pharmacological Society from January 2020 to December 2021.[12] He is President-Elect of the Association of Physicians for 2022, and will become President in 2023.[13]

In 2022, he chaired a committee that produced a report, Personalised prescribing, on behalf of the Royal College of Physicians of London and the British Pharmacological Society, which advocates the implementation of pharmacogenomics into the UK NHS.[14]

Clinical Pharmacology, Pharmacogenetics and drug safety are the main areas of Pirmohamed's research. With a particular focus on adverse drug reactions, their role in improving prescription choices and the development of genetic tests for personalised medicine. He has published over 600 articles.[15] He is included the 2021 list of highly cited researchers by Clarivate,[16] and has been ranked number 1 expert in pharmacogenetics worldwide by Expertscape.[17]

Pirmohamed is an inaugural NIHR Senior Investigator and is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.[6] Pirmohamed has received the William Withering Medal from the Royal College of Physicians and the IPIT award for Public Service from the University of North Carolina in the US.[18] and the Bionow Outstanding Contribution award for 2021.[19] He was knighted the in Queen's Birthday Honours in June 2015 for services to Medicine.[6]

• British Medical Association
• British Pharmacological Society
• Association of Physicians
• Medical Council on Alcohol
• Medical Research Society
• Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine
• Academy of Medical Sciences

Pirmohamed has been awarded funding from The UK Department of Health, NIHR, MRC, Wellcome Trust, Wolfson Foundation, and the EU FP7 programme funds .[20]