Dr. Omar Almazroo

Chief of Drug Evaluators Drug Sector , SFDA

He led the process of establishing the pharmaceutical products evaluation directorate at SFDA, which is the scientific backbone of the drug sector since 2009. Dr. Almazroo was the first director appointed for pharmaceutical products evaluation. With his colleagues, he developed many of the current scientific practices in the directorate. He also initiated, coordinated and conducted two clinical studies at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), one of which was Phase I/II – Investigational New Drug (IND) clinical study.

Dr. Almazroo graduated from School of Pharmacy, King Saud University with a Bachelor degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences. In 2009, he was among the top 10% of all graduates in the Master of Sciences in biopharmaceuticals from School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. On 27 April 2013, he was one of the first Saudi pharmacists to complete the Certificate in Clinical and Translational Sciences (master degree level) from the School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.  In 2017, he received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from University of Pittsburgh. The PhD research was focused on hepatic ischemia and reperfusion injury in liver transplantation. He conducted preclinical and clinical studies, while his research involved in using ex-vivo, in-vivo and simulation models for pharmacokinetics, developed several mass spectrometry assays and utilized PCR techniques for gene characterization.