Paul Workman is Harrap Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Director of the Cancer Research UK Centre for Cancer Therapeutics at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. He is distinguished for his major contributions to the development of novel anti-cancer agents. His achievements lie in two areas of drug development: drugs activated by tumour hypoxia and reductases, and secondly, drugs targeted against the molecular pathology of cancer cells. He led the bioscience team at Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, which was involved in the discovery of the EGF-receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor Iressa, now undergoing Phase III trials in lung cancer. Recently his laboratory has been successful in identifying small molecule inhibitors of histone acetyltransferase that may provide drugs to modify gene expression.