CEO of Mirzyme Professor Asif Ahmed (www.asifahmed.org) has been nominated for Birmingham Buisnessman Of The Year 2022. He is a world-renowned vascular scientist, Founder and Executive Chairman of MirZyme Therapeutics whose mission is to eradicate pre-eclampsia, a life-threatening disease of pregnancy that kills 80,000 women and half a million babies each year as well as increasingthe morbidity of survivors by creating future chronic health conditions. Whilst simultaneously undertaking his research, Professor Ahmed successfully launched a financially viable and socially impactful startup in the form of Aston Medical School, after which he decided to shift his full focus towards making pre-eclampsia history. His work led to a breakthrough discovery of two protective molecular pathways that prevent pre-eclampsia. He has since moved his science out of the lab and into the spinout company, MirZyme Therapeutics (www.mirzyme.com). The company has 10 patents granted in 30 countries to both predict and prevent pre-eclampsia. After more than 20 years of research and over $40M in competitive grant awards, he and the team at MirZyme have developed a unique diagnostic and therapeutic understanding of pre-eclampsia. This has the potential to cure the disease by enabling the application of the world’s first patient-tailored therapeutics for pre-eclampsia.
The Stanford Study 2020 ranked him in the Top 1% of scientists in the world and he has been a full professor for over two decades at distinguished research universities including Stanford University. Professor Ahmed’s business and managerial acumen is self-evident as the founder of the Aston Medical School at Aston University in Birmingham, U.K. and was its inaugural Executive Dean and Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Professor Ahmed is also the Senior Adviser to the President of the University of Southampton.
Nominator Mr Shahid Sheikh OBE (left) & nominee Professor Asif Ahmed (right)