Renowned in the field of drug discovery and R&D, Prof Anil Koul is currently Vice-President and Head of Global Public Health & Infectious Diseases Discovery Unit at Johnson and Johnson. He is Professor of Translation Discovery at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where he has set up a laboratory to focus on TB translational medicine research. As a member of Board of Directors at Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Belgium, a J&J’s European subsidiary, he holds fiduciary responsibility.

Anil’s key achievement to date has been the discovery and development of Bedaquiline – the first drug to be approved in the last 45 years for the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Bedaquiline has been conditionally approved in over 64 countries and has reached more than 600,000 TB patients across the world. It is on WHO’s list of ‘essential medicines’ both for adult as well as paediatric TB.

For the discovery and development of Bedaquiline, Anil was awarded by the American Chemical Society its annual ‘Heroes of Chemistry’ award in 2020. He also received the ‘Sun Pharma Research Award’ in 2017 and the ‘Swiss TB Prize’ by Society of Pneumology (Switzerland) for his contributions in 2016. The J&J team was awarded the ‘Prix Galien French Prize’ for the achievement too. Anil has published in leading scientific journals, such as Nature and Science among others, and holds more than 30 international patents.

Between 2017-2019 Anil served as Director of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) - Institute of Microbial Technology, a premier biotechnology laboratory of Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. He has also been on Scientific Advisory Board of CSIR. He is currently a core member of UN’s Stop TB Partnership Working Group on New Drugs; and, in 2023, he was listed among the ‘Top 20 Innovators for Bioscience innovations’ in India by BioVoice News.

Anil is passionate about global public health, driving public sector innovations and the translation and build of cost-effective R&D business models for neglected diseases. He has worked across three continents (America, Europe, and Asia) and continues to teach, mentor, advise and give presentations.