Kanatzhan "Kanat" Baizakovich Alibekov[1] (born 1950), known as Kenneth "Ken" Alibek[2] since 1992, is a Kazakh-American microbiologist, bioweaponeer, and biological warfare administrative management expert.

[3] During his career in Soviet bioweaponry development in the late 1970s and 1980s, Alibekov managed projects that included weaponizing glanders and Marburg hemorrhagic fever, and created Russia's first tularemia bomb.

[3] Ohio-based Locus Fermentation Solutions hired Alibek in 2015 as executive vice president for research and development of biologically active molecules for different applications.

[10] Alibek's academic performance while studying military medicine at the Tomsk Medical Institute and his family's noted patriotism led to his selection to work for Biopreparat, the secret biological weapons program overseen by the Soviet Union's Council of Ministers.

At Omutninsk, Alibek mastered the art and science of formulating and evaluating nutrient media and cultivation conditions for the optimization of microbial growth.

With the assistance of a colleague, he designed and constructed a microbiology research and development laboratory that worked on techniques to optimize the production of biological formulations.

In response to a Spring 1990 announcement that the Ministry of Medical and Microbiological Industry was to be reorganized, Alibek drafted and forwarded a memo to then General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev proposing the cessation of Biopreparat's biological weapons work.

Gorbachev approved the proposal, but an additional paragraph was secretly inserted into Alibek's draft, resulting in a presidential decree that ordered the end of Biopreparat's biological weapons work but also required them to remain prepared for future bioweapons production.

During a CIA debriefing, Alibek described the Soviet efforts to weaponize a particularly virulent smallpox strain, producing hundreds of tons of the virus that could be disseminated with bombs or ballistic missiles.

[14] Reporting the prospect of Iraq gaining the ability to get hold of smallpox or anthrax, Alibek said, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."

Motivated by the lack of affordable anti-cancer therapies available in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, AFG was using Alibek's biotechnology experience to plan, build, and manage a new pharmaceutical production facility designed specifically to address this problem.

Alibek's main research focus was developing novel forms of therapy for late-stage oncological diseases and other chronic degenerative pathologies and disorders.

[17] In 2010, Alibek was invited to begin working in Kazakhstan as a head of the Department of Chemistry and Biology at the School of Science and Technology of Nazarbayev University in Astana, where he was engaged in the development of anti-cancer drugs and life-prolonging drugs, and was chairman of the board of the Republican Scientific Center for Emergency Medical Care and headed the National Scientific Center for Oncology and Transplantation.

Three submitted Alibekov patent applications for registration were rejected by the National Institute of Intellectual Property of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Kazakhstan since there was no novelty.

[24] Starting in 2007, Alibek began researching autism based on his background as a board-certified oncologist and his own personal connection to the disorder through his daughter, Mary.

[25] In a September 2003 news release, Alibek and another professor suggested, based on their laboratory research, that the smallpox vaccination might increase a person's resistance to HIV.

According to smallpox expert and former White House science advisor Donald Henderson, "This is a theory that... does not hold up at all, and it does not make any sense from a biologic point of view...This idea...was straight off the wall.

In 2010, an article coauthored by Alibek appeared in Biomed Central - Immunology, a scientific journal, that outlined the results of their research showing that prior immunization with the vaccine Dryvax may confer resistance to HIV replication.