Address:

Work: College of Pharmacy, Al-Quds University, Jerusalem

Palestine. Tel. and Fax +972-2-2790413.

Home: Ramallah, Palestine.

Nationality      USA and Israel

Affiliation:  Al-Quds University, Abu-Dies, Jerusalem, P.O. Box 20002, Palestine.

Professor Rafik Karaman is a professor in the Department of Bioorganic Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, Al-Quds University, Jerusalem, Palestine. He received his Ph.D. degree in bioorganic chemistry from the Hebrew University in 1987, his MS degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Hebrew University in 1983, and his bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from the Hebrew University in 1981. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Toledo and University of California at Santa Barbara for 5 years where he worked with Professor T.C. Bruice in the bioorganic chemistry field. Professor Karaman is broadly interested in the design and synthesis of prodrug systems to be used for the delivery of certain drugs that have poor water solubility or/and have low bioavailability as well as synthesis of prodrugs for masking the bitter taste of the corresponding parent drugs. The design for these prodrugs is executed using ab initio, DFT, semiempirical, molecular mechanics as well as molecular dynamics and conformational dynamics methods. The overarching goal of his research activities is to establish a method for obtaining prodrugs that their interconversion rates will be controlled or programmed by the linker nature attached to their parent drugs without the interconversion of any metabolic enzyme. Professor Karaman has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications 60 of them were published in the recent 6 years. He is currently an editor and an editorial board member of 8 international journals in the areas of pharmaceutical sciences.