People

Keith Stewart is a myeloma researcher who leads Canada's largest cancer centre.

Leukaemia researcher who found that AML stem cells depend on mitochondrial proteases and metabolism.

Adrian Krainer invented the antisense drug nusinersen and studies how splicing errors drive cancer.

Co-discovered that BRCA-deficient cancers die when PARP is blocked, the idea behind an entire drug class.

GI oncologist who led CALGB/SWOG 80405 and helped show that tumour side matters in colorectal cancer.

Albert Koong is a radiation oncologist leading MD Anderson's radiation department, with a focus on pancreatic cancer and SBRT.

Sarcoma surgeon who led the ISG-STS 1001 trial of histology-tailored neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Led the SWOG S1826 trial that made nivolumab part of first-line Hodgkin lymphoma treatment.

Led the trials of larotrectinib, entrectinib, repotrectinib and selpercatinib that turned rare gene fusions into treatable targets.

Surgical oncologist who led the EORTC adjuvant ipilimumab and pembrolizumab trials in melanoma.

Diagnosed with neuroblastoma before her first birthday, she set up a lemonade stand at four to raise money for her hospital. By her death at eight in 2004 it had raised $1 million; the foundation in her name has raised hundreds of millions since.

Led the trial proving that an anti-GD2 antibody improves survival in high-risk neuroblastoma.

Radiation oncologist who showed MRI-guided prostate radiotherapy causes fewer side effects.

Amit Oza is a gynaecologic oncologist who led early olaparib and niraparib studies in ovarian cancer.

Amod Sarnaik led the pivotal lifileucel trial that produced the first approved TIL therapy.

Ananya Choudhury is a clinical oncologist developing biomarker-guided radiotherapy for bladder cancer.

The WHO's lead on cancer control, steering the cervical cancer elimination and global breast and childhood cancer initiatives.

Led the study in which every patient with mismatch-repair-deficient rectal cancer had a complete response to dostarlimab, without surgery or radiation.

Andreas Trumpp is a stem cell biologist studying how dormant cancer cells seed metastases and resist therapy.

Co-created the DNA methylation classifier that changed how brain tumours are diagnosed worldwide.

Andrés Cervantes is a gastrointestinal oncologist and was ESMO President for 2023-2024.

Uses organoids and functional genomics to find what pancreatic cancers depend on beyond KRAS.

Led OlympiA, the trial that showed a year of olaparib after surgery improves survival in BRCA-mutated breast cancer.

Andrew Wardley is a breast oncologist involved in the PERSEPHONE trial of shorter trastuzumab.

Angela DeMichele led the first palbociclib clinical trial and co-leads the I-SPY 2 adaptive platform.

Angelika Eggert is a paediatric oncologist and neuroblastoma researcher.

Her 2013 New York Times essay about carrying a BRCA1 mutation and choosing preventive mastectomy roughly doubled referrals for hereditary cancer testing in several countries: the "Angelina Jolie effect".

Anirban Maitra is a pancreatic cancer pathologist working on catching the disease early and understanding its precursors.

Ann Partridge led the POSITIVE trial showing women can safely pause hormone therapy to have a baby.

Surgeon who developed the laparoscopic score for predicting whether ovarian cancer can be fully removed.

Anne Chiang is a thoracic oncologist overseeing SWOG's breast and lung trial portfolios.

Anthony Gonçalves is a medical oncologist leading breast and ovarian cancer research at Institut Paoli-Calmettes.

Invented BH3 profiling, the functional test behind venetoclax's success, before becoming NCI director.

Melanoma immunotherapy leader behind pembrolizumab's first trials and the science of why immunotherapy fails.

Artur Katz is a senior São Paulo oncologist and long-time leader of the Sírio-Libanês oncology centre.

Discovered the TMPRSS2-ERG fusion in prostate cancer and built one of the first clinical sequencing programmes.

Co-invented the CAPP-Seq method for reading tumour DNA in blood and used it to track lymphoma and lung cancer.

In 2014 his parents took him from a British hospital to seek proton beam therapy for a brain tumour abroad, were arrested, then vindicated. The case sped the building of NHS proton centres.

After a mastectomy in 1978 she wrote The Cancer Journals, refusing a prosthesis and the expectation that women hide their cancer. The book became a founding text of patient writing.

Aurélien Marabelle is the immunotherapy investigator behind the tumour-agnostic pembrolizumab data in MSI-high cancers.

In 1992 she was the first patient with recurrent HER2-positive breast cancer to be treated with the antibody that became Herceptin, in Dennis Slamon's trial at UCLA. She became its first long-term survivor.

Beatriz Castelo is a medical oncologist in the head and neck programme at La Paz.

Neurosurgeon who delivers CAR-T cells directly into the brain in City of Hope's glioma trials.

Benjamin Besse is a lung cancer trialist central to the Dato-DXd and HER3-DXd lung programmes.

Discovered how lenalidomide works, launching the field of molecular-glue degraders, and defined clonal haematopoiesis before leading Dana-Farber.

Principal investigator of CROWN, where lorlatinib produced the longest disease control ever recorded for a targeted lung cancer pill.

He argued that breast cancer is a systemic disease from early on, then proved in randomised trials that lumpectomy with radiation equals mastectomy and that tamoxifen after surgery, and even before cancer, saves lives.

Bert Vogelstein is the most-cited scientist in cancer genetics: he mapped how colorectal cancer develops and founded the field of cancer genome sequencing and blood-based detection.

Weeks after becoming First Lady in 1974 she had a mastectomy and, unusually for the time, said so publicly. Clinics recorded a surge of women coming for breast examinations.

Principal investigator of OptiTROP-Breast01, the Chinese trial that got the TROP2 ADC sacituzumab tirumotecan approved before any Western approval.

Ran the trials that made trastuzumab deruxtecan the first HER2-directed drug for lung cancer.

Bradley Bernstein mapped the chromatin landscapes that let cancer cells switch identities and resist drugs.

He pushed a shelved kinase inhibitor through the laboratory and into a 1998 trial when few believed a targeted pill could work. Imatinib made chronic myeloid leukaemia a disease people live with, and became the model for targeted therapy.

Led the selumetinib trials that gave children with neurofibromatosis their first approved drug.

Built the manufacturing that turned CAR-T from a lab idea into a product given to thousands of patients.

Bruce Stillman discovered how DNA replication starts, the process cancer cells push into overdrive.

A retired railway engineer from Oregon with chronic myeloid leukaemia, he was the first person to take the drug that became Gleevec, in June 1998, after reading about Brian Druker's research in a newspaper.

Co-led MARIPOSA, the trial where amivantamab plus lazertinib beat osimertinib, and a leading figure in Asian lung cancer drug development.

Immunologist who works out how dendritic cells detect dying tumour cells and start an anti-cancer response.

Principal investigator of HARMONi-2, the trial where ivonescimab beat pembrolizumab head-to-head, and of the first EGFR-TKI phase 3 in Chinese patients.

Candace Johnson is a pharmacologist who has led America's oldest cancer centre since 2015.

Developed the CD19 CAR-T therapy that became the first approved gene-modified cell therapy for cancer.

Carlos Barrios is the most visible Latin American voice in global breast cancer trials and a founder of the region's cooperative group LACOG.

Built small-cell lung cancer models from circulating tumour cells and leads the Manchester institute.

Medical oncologist known for germ cell tumour research and anti-EGFR trials in colorectal cancer.

Pathologist who established tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes as a biomarker in breast cancer.

He made Black Panther and other films while being treated for colon cancer, which he kept private. His death at 43 in 2020 forced attention on rising colorectal cancer in young adults and its heavier toll on Black Americans.

First author of the CT041 trials that showed a CAR-T can shrink gastric and pancreatic tumours.

Charles Blanke is a GI oncologist who chaired SWOG for a decade and led early imatinib trials in GIST.

Breast trialist who co-led OlympiA, showing adjuvant olaparib improves survival in BRCA carriers.

Co-developed imatinib's successor dasatinib and the prostate drug enzalutamide, and explained how cancers resist targeted drugs.

Leads TRACERx, the study that follows lung cancers as they evolve, and showed how air pollution can trigger lung cancer without new mutations.

Showed that adding blood-based sequencing to tissue testing finds more targetable lung cancer mutations.

Cheryl Willman is a leukaemia genomics pioneer who leads Mayo Clinic's cancer centre across its three sites.

Led NADINA, which showed giving immunotherapy before melanoma surgery beats giving it after.

Engineered the IL13Rα2 CAR-T cells that produced a complete response in glioblastoma when infused into the brain.

Head and neck oncologist who helped define the genomic subtypes of HPV-positive and HPV-negative disease.

Gene therapy pioneer who developed methods to track vector integration in treated patients.

Led SHIVA, the first randomised trial of genomics-matched therapy, and heads Institut Curie's early trials unit.

Co-discovered the synthetic lethality between PARP inhibition and BRCA loss that underlies PARP inhibitor therapy.

Christopher Flowers is a lymphoma specialist who leads MD Anderson's entire medical oncology division.

Found that leukaemias depend on the chromatin reader BRD4, launching BET inhibitors, and mapped transcriptional addictions in sarcoma.

Claus Belka is a radiation oncologist leading MR-guided adaptive radiotherapy research in Munich.

Clemens Kratochwil reported the first patients treated with actinium-225 PSMA therapy.

Clifford Hudis is a breast oncologist who has run ASCO since 2016.

Costas Lyssiotis shows how pancreatic tumours feed off their surrounding cells and how to cut the supply.

Crystal Mackall is a cell therapy pioneer whose team brought GD2 CAR-T to children with lethal brain tumours.

Dae Ho Lee is a thoracic oncologist behind Korean participation in the EGFR, ALK, and MET inhibitor trials that shaped lung cancer care.

Nurse, social worker and doctor who opened St Christopher's Hospice in 1967 and established that pain in advanced cancer could be prevented with regular oral morphine and attention to the whole person.

Diagnosed with bowel cancer at 35, she spent five years telling people to check their poo, co-hosted the BBC's You, Me and the Big C, and raised over £11 million for Cancer Research UK in the weeks before her death in 2022.

Co-discovered EGFR mutations in lung cancer and pioneered circulating tumour cell technology.

Built the pancreatic cancer organoid models now used to test drugs against a patient's own tumour.

Built MSK-IMPACT, the first FDA-authorised tumour sequencing panel, and the clinical genomics programme behind OncoKB and cBioPortal.

David Cameron is a breast oncologist who chairs the Breast International Group.

Gastrointestinal oncologist who led landmark trials of perioperative chemotherapy in gastric and oesophageal cancer.

Treated the first adult CLL patients with CAR-T and reported a decade of durable remissions.

Breast oncologist who co-leads SWOG and studies adherence, toxicity, and how care is actually delivered.

Nurse scientist who put patient-reported outcomes into cooperative group radiation trials.

Leads one of the largest breast medical oncology departments, and led the ribociclib trial in premenopausal women.

Denis Lacombe leads Europe's academic cancer trials organisation.

Virologist whose HPV research underpinned the vaccines that are eliminating cervical cancer.

Linked HER2 amplification to aggressive breast cancer and drove trastuzumab and later palbociclib to approval.

Dingwei Ye is China's leading uro-oncologist, whose department runs the Chinese arms of major prostate and bladder cancer trials.

Principal investigator of TOPAZ-1, the trial that added immunotherapy to first-line chemotherapy for bile duct cancer.

As the founding director of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in 1962 he designed Total Therapy, combining drugs with treatment of the brain and spinal fluid, and raised childhood leukaemia cure rates from near zero to about half within a decade.

Dong-Wan Kim is a thoracic oncologist central to the ALK and ROS1 inhibitor trials, from crizotinib to brigatinib and beyond.

Dongsheng Tu is the statistician behind decades of CCTG trials, including the erlotinib and cetuximab studies that changed lung and colorectal cancer care.

Co-developed the HPV vaccine technology that is eliminating cervical cancer in vaccinated populations.

Paediatric oncologist who chairs the world's largest childhood cancer research organisation.

Immunologist who helped define the PD-1 pathway's role in cancer and built one of the largest immunotherapy institutes.

Drew Weissman is the Nobel laureate whose modified-mRNA discovery underlies mRNA vaccines and now in vivo CAR-T.

First author of the studies that showed mismatch-repair-deficient tumours respond to PD-1 blockade regardless of origin.

Leading pancreatic cancer trialist, including the maintenance PARP-inhibitor and germline-BRCA studies.

A 12-year-old lymphoma patient of Sidney Farber whose 1948 radio broadcast launched the Jimmy Fund, which has funded Dana-Farber for more than 75 years.

Elena Élez is a colorectal cancer investigator who led the BREAKWATER trial's clinical programme.

Elena Garralda leads one of Europe's largest phase 1 units.

Eliane Piaggio is an immunologist studying regulatory T cells and immune profiling to guide immunotherapy.

Computational oncologist who built open tools for interpreting tumour genomes and predicting response.

Leads the WHO's cancer research agency, which classifies carcinogens and publishes the world's cancer statistics.

Her 1969 book On Death and Dying, based on interviews with terminally ill patients in a Chicago hospital, made it acceptable for doctors to talk with patients about dying and helped launch the American hospice movement.

Pancreatic cancer immunologist who developed the GVAX vaccine and led national cancer policy panels.

With Emil Freireich he showed that combinations of drugs could cure childhood leukaemia, then extended the idea to Hodgkin lymphoma and to adjuvant treatment after surgery.

At the NCI in the early 1960s he and Emil Frei gave children four drugs at once, VAMP, against fierce opposition, and turned a uniformly fatal leukaemia into a curable one. He also worked out platelet transfusion.

Led the DRUP trial giving off-label targeted drugs by genomic match, and developed organoid-based testing.

Neuroendocrine tumour specialist who helps design the trials that set treatment for these rare cancers.

The first child treated with CAR-T cells, in 2012. Her recovery from relapsed leukaemia turned an experimental idea into an approved therapy.

Enrique Espinosa is a medical oncologist working on melanoma and gene-expression biomarkers.

Thoracic oncologist who led IMpower010, establishing adjuvant atezolizumab in lung cancer.

Eric Haura is a lung cancer physician-scientist who maps drug-target signalling with proteomics.

Prostate cancer trialist who helped bring abiraterone and sipuleucel-T to patients, and led ASCO in 2025-26.

Co-author of the Fearon-Vogelstein model of how colorectal cancer develops step by step.

Cell biologist studying how the tumour's surroundings help cancer cells invade and resist drugs.

Eunice Wang is an AML trialist who helped bring FLT3 and menin inhibitors to patients.

Evandro de Azambuja is a breast oncologist who studies heart safety of HER2-targeted therapy in BIG trials.

Evanthia Galanis is a brain tumour specialist who chairs one of the largest US clinical trial networks.

A breast cancer survivor and Estée Lauder executive who co-created the pink ribbon in 1992 and founded the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in 1993, now one of the largest private funders of breast cancer research.

Head and neck cancer leader who established organ-preserving chemoradiation and led ASCO in 2021-22.

First author of the 2010 ipilimumab trial that proved immunotherapy could extend survival in melanoma.

Breast cancer geneticist who led SOLAR-1 and the SAFIR precision-medicine trials; ESMO President 2025-2026.

Fabrice Barlesi runs Europe's largest cancer centre and is a leading lung cancer trialist.

A breast oncologist who led Chinese pyrotinib and ADC trials and studies of ctDNA in HER2-positive disease.

A GI oncologist whose work on immunotherapy biomarkers and Chinese gastric cancer trials feeds global guidelines.

Pioneer of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in human cells, the tool behind cancer dependency screens and edited cell therapies.

Filippo de Braud heads medical oncology and the phase 1 programme at Italy's national cancer institute.

Fiona Blackhall is a thoracic oncologist leading small-cell lung cancer trials and biomarker research at The Christie.

A lawyer treated for breast cancer in 1987 who built the National Breast Cancer Coalition and won the Department of Defense breast cancer programme, the first to put trained patient advocates on scientific review panels.

Francisca Vazquez leads DepMap, the public map of which genes each cancer cell line cannot live without.

Led PADA-1, the first trial to switch endocrine therapy on a rising ESR1 mutation in blood.

RAS biologist who founded Onyx Pharmaceuticals and led the NCI's national effort to drug RAS.

Freddie Bray runs GLOBOCAN, the source of the world's cancer incidence and mortality figures.

Led the ZUMA-7 trial that put CAR-T ahead of transplant in relapsed large B-cell lymphoma.

Frederik Giesel co-developed FAPI PET imaging and now leads nuclear medicine in Düsseldorf.

Funda Meric-Bernstam runs the world's largest phase 1 programme and led the tumour-agnostic HER2 ADC study.

Wrote the algorithms (MuTect, MutSig, ABSOLUTE) that most cancer genome studies use to find mutations.

Gary Lyman is an oncologist and health economist behind guidelines on growth factors, thrombosis, and biosimilars in cancer care.

Without a doctorate, she and George Hitchings designed drugs to block DNA building blocks. Their 6-mercaptopurine of 1951 remains part of the cure for childhood leukaemia; she won the Nobel Prize in 1988.

Giampaolo Tortora is a medical oncologist who directs the Gemelli comprehensive cancer centre.

The Saturday Night Live star wrote about her ovarian cancer in It's Always Something and died at 42 in 1989. Her name lives on in Gilda's Club and the familial ovarian cancer registry at Roswell Park.

Giovanni Scambia is a gynaecologic oncologist who leads research at the Gemelli hospital.

MD Anderson's chief scientist, a cell-cycle biologist who ran drug discovery in industry before leading the centre's research.

Breast oncologist and phase 1 leader who co-led DESTINY-Breast06 and shaped the HER2-low concept.

A melanoma pioneer who led the vemurafenib and cobimetinib trials and now heads Victoria's cancer alliance.

Founded the German Breast Group and led KATHERINE, which made T-DM1 standard after residual disease.

Hagen Kennecke is a GI oncologist who leads SWOG's gastrointestinal and melanoma committees.

Hagop Kantarjian is one of the most prolific leukaemia investigators alive, and helped bring more than a dozen leukaemia drugs to approval.

Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren proposed the missing-self hypothesis of NK cell recognition.

Hans-Peter Kiem is a gene and cell therapy researcher working on editing blood stem cells inside the body.

Against the consensus that herpes was to blame, he proposed in 1976 that papillomaviruses cause cervical cancer and isolated HPV16 and HPV18 from tumours in 1983-84, making vaccination and HPV testing possible. Nobel Prize 2008.

Built the data centre behind the Japan Clinical Oncology Group, the country's main academic trials network.

Hatem Soliman is a breast oncologist leading immunotherapy and genomic-assay trials, including in triple-negative disease.

Heather Wakelee is a lung cancer leader who led the first adjuvant immunotherapy trial to change practice.

Mapped how EGFR-mutant lung cancers resist osimertinib and led the HER3-directed ADC trials that followed.

Her cervical cancer cells, taken in 1951 without her knowledge, became HeLa, the first immortal human cell line. Her story changed how consent and family rights in research are handled.

Epidemiologist whose studies underpin colonoscopy and stool-test screening for bowel cancer.

Leads Japan's national cancer centre, the hub of the country's genomic medicine and early-phase trial programmes.

A liver cancer oncologist who has been on the steering group of several global HCC trials with strong Asian enrolment.

Breast oncologist who led key ADC and CDK4/6 trials and moved from UCSF to City of Hope in 2024.

Defined how prostate cancer trials are run and read, from PSA working-group criteria to circulating tumour cell biomarkers.

A Yonsei oncologist who has led checkpoint-inhibitor and combination trials in lung and head-and-neck cancer.

Iain Foulkes directs the research portfolio of Cancer Research UK.

Ian Cree edits the WHO 'Blue Books', the classification every pathologist uses to name a cancer.

In 1991 he and Jian Zhou made HPV virus-like particles in the laboratory, the basis of the vaccines that could eliminate cervical cancer. Australia, where the vaccine was rolled out first, is on course to do so.

Led the first talimogene laherparepvec plus ipilimumab study and co-wrote the immune toxicity management guidelines.

Isolated the first blood stem cells and discovered the 'don't eat me' signal CD47 on cancer cells.

A reality-television star whose cervical cancer and death at 27 in 2009 were followed by hundreds of thousands of extra cervical screening tests in England: the "Jade Goody effect".

Ran the long-term CD19 CAR-T studies in adult leukaemia that showed durable remissions and defined toxicity risk.

Jae Lyun Lee is a genitourinary oncologist who brought Korean cohorts into the enfortumab, pembrolizumab, and PARP-inhibitor GU trials.

Heads medical oncology at La Paz with a focus on gastrointestinal and older-patient oncology.

Jame Abraham leads medical oncology at Cleveland Clinic and its breast cancer trial programme.

Runs NCI's immuno-oncology clinical programme, from prostate cancer vaccines to bifunctional checkpoint fusion proteins.

Melanoma and kidney cancer trialist who co-led CheckMate 067, the trial with 10-year immunotherapy survival data.

Discovered that blocking CTLA-4 unleashes T cells against cancer, the work behind ipilimumab and the 2018 Nobel Prize.

At Harlem Hospital in the 1950s she showed methotrexate could shrink breast and skin cancers, tested drugs on patients' own tumour cells, and in 1964 was the only woman among the seven founders of ASCO.

Runs Canada's academic cancer trials network, which has led practice-changing trials from PA.3 to CO.17 and beyond.

Working part-time at her dining-room table in 1972, she showed the Philadelphia chromosome in CML is a swap between chromosomes 9 and 22. Cancer had a genetic cause, and imatinib later hit the fused gene.

Jaroslaw Maciejewski is a leukaemia geneticist who defined the mutational landscape of myelodysplastic syndromes.

Breast oncologist who led DESTINY-Breast03 and DESTINY-Breast09, the trials that made Enhertu the HER2-positive standard.

Ran the phase 1 unit that pioneered many targeted therapies, and led the FLAURA trial that made osimertinib first-line.

Sarcoma expert who leads Centre Léon Bérard and the French cancer centre network UNICANCER.

A gastric cancer trialist who pioneered biomarker-driven umbrella trials in Korea and helped bring HER2 and Claudin 18.2 agents to Asian patients.

Jennifer Litton led the EMBRACA trial that brought talazoparib to BRCA-mutated breast cancer.

Runs the UCLA theranostics trials that test PSMA imaging against conventional scans and lutetium against chemotherapy.

A Chinese virologist whose skill in expressing viral proteins made the first HPV virus-like particles in 1991. He died in 1999 at 42, seven years before the vaccine reached the public.

Runs China's national cancer centre and the registry that reports the country's cancer statistics.

Led the RATIONALE trials of tislelizumab in lung cancer and many other Chinese registrational NSCLC studies.

Dying of metastatic cancer, he told an audience in 1993, "Don't give up, don't ever give up," and announced a foundation that has since granted hundreds of millions of dollars to cancer research.

A psychiatrist who set up the first full-time psychiatry service in a cancer hospital at Memorial Sloan Kettering in 1977, founded the field's societies and journal, and made distress a vital sign in cancer care.

Principal investigator of FRESCO, the Chinese trial that first proved fruquintinib works in refractory colorectal cancer.

Principal investigator of ESCORT, the trial that established camrelizumab in oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

Cancer biologist who characterised truncated HER2 (p95HER2) and develops p95HER2-targeted T-cell engagers.

Johann de Bono led the trials that brought abiraterone and olaparib to prostate cancer patients.

Nuclear medicine leader who helped bring PSMA PET and radioligand therapy to the United States.

Discovered cancer stem cells, showing leukaemia is driven by a rare population of self-renewing cells.

Transplant pioneer who developed plerixafor for stem-cell mobilisation and CD7 CAR-T for T-cell leukaemia.

John Haanen led the first randomised phase 3 trial of TIL therapy, which beat ipilimumab in melanoma.

Lung cancer leader behind trials that changed treatment of EGFR-mutant and stage III disease.

Jonas Bergh is a breast oncologist and long-standing leader of Swedish and European breast cancer trials.

Joohyuk Sohn is a Yonsei breast oncologist and investigator on the DESTINY-Breast and TROPION trials.

Colorectal cancer trialist who led BEACON and BREAKWATER, bringing targeted therapy to BRAF-mutant disease; former ESMO President.

An immunologist who worked out how killer T cells destroy their targets, and now directs research at Australia's cancer hospital.

Developed in situ vaccination, turning a single injected lymphoma tumour into a vaccine against the rest.

In 1971 he proposed that tumours cannot grow beyond a few millimetres without recruiting blood vessels, and that blocking them could treat cancer. Dismissed for decades, the idea produced bevacizumab and a class of drugs.

A leading authority on inherited cancer risk and how BRCA carriers should be treated and screened.

Led CheckMate 017, the first trial to show immunotherapy beats chemotherapy in lung cancer.

Julie Park led the COG trial that made tandem transplant standard for high-risk neuroblastoma.

Jun Ma is the world's leading nasopharyngeal carcinoma trialist, whose randomised studies define induction chemotherapy and immunotherapy for the disease.

Jürgen Debus leads Europe's pioneering heavy-ion therapy centre.

Built the Network Genomic Medicine that brought molecular testing to lung cancer patients across Germany, and led the capmatinib GEOMETRY trial.

Justin Lathia studies glioblastoma stem cells and why brain tumours differ between men and women.

Showed that oncogene-driven lung cancers respond poorly to immunotherapy and led the pivotal RET and ALK inhibitor studies.

A breast and gynaecologic oncologist deeply involved in the early trastuzumab deruxtecan studies and in Japanese ADC development.

Led LATITUDE and PEACE-1, which put abiraterone into first-line metastatic prostate cancer.

A geriatrician with a rare sarcoma who noticed that the staff treating her did not introduce themselves. Her 2013 campaign, #hellomynameis, was adopted by hundreds of thousands of health workers.

Paediatric oncologist whose trials established transplant and 13-cis-retinoic acid for high-risk neuroblastoma.

Breast and lung oncologist who led the trials showing gene tests can guide chemotherapy decisions.

After her husband died of colon cancer at 42, she had a colonoscopy live on national television in 2000. Screening rates rose measurably afterwards: the "Couric effect".

Led the first trials of BRAF inhibition in melanoma and chairs the NCI-MATCH precision medicine trial.

Developed the MANAFEST assay to track the tumour-specific T cells that immunotherapy awakens.

Translated bortezomib and lenalidomide from bench to bedside, helping turn myeloma from a two-year to a decade-plus disease.

Co-discovered APC, the gatekeeper gene of colorectal cancer, and co-led the first cancer genome sequences.

The chemist whose lab found the hidden pocket in KRAS G12C that made the 'undruggable' target druggable.

Kevin Harrington is a head and neck oncologist and oncolytic virus pioneer who led the OPTiM trial of T-VEC.

Klaus Pantel is a pioneer of circulating tumour cell research and the liquid biopsy field.

Principal investigator of SPOTLIGHT and DESTINY-Gastric01, two trials that created new drug classes for stomach cancer.

Leads thoracic oncology at NCC East and the LC-SCRUM-Japan network that connects rare-driver lung cancer patients to trials.

Diagnosed with incurable breast cancer at 23 after her symptoms were dismissed, she founded CoppaFeel! in 2009 to teach young people to check their chests. She lived with the disease for fifteen years.

Epigenetics researcher who leads the ICR, the academic institution with the most cancer drug discoveries.

Leads medical oncology at Tata Memorial and its programme of pragmatic trials that make treatments affordable.

Treated in 1996 for testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain, he founded the foundation that made survivorship a public cause and sold 80 million yellow wristbands. His doping and its exposure in 2012 complicate the legacy.

Lars Bullinger is a haematologist and AML genomics researcher leading Charité's haematology department.

Breast surgeon who built the I-SPY platform, the adaptive trial that tests new drugs before surgery.

Immunologist who showed that the gut microbiome shapes responses to immunotherapy and chemotherapy.

Defined EGFR resistance mechanisms in lung cancer and now leads early-detection research including the Sybil AI lung-risk model.

Runs breast medical oncology at MGH and studies the tumour-suppressor biology behind hereditary and triple-negative breast cancer.

Li Ding is the computational leader of TCGA and CPTAC analyses linking genomes to proteins across cancers.

Led the Chinese trials of PD-1 blockade in nasopharyngeal and lung cancer and the early studies of the EGFR×HER3 bispecific ADC iza-bren.

Runs one of the world's largest phase 1 programmes and led trials that shaped head and neck cancer immunotherapy.

Led the CT041 trials that produced the first CAR-T therapy approved for a solid tumour, in gastric cancer.

Lori Pierce is a breast radiation oncologist and ASCO past president focused on equity in cancer care.

Louis Staudt defined the molecular subtypes of large B-cell lymphoma that guide targeted therapy.

Co-led the work that made pembrolizumab the first tumour-agnostic cancer drug approval, for mismatch-repair-deficient tumours.

Lynn Schuchter is a melanoma oncologist who led ASCO in 2023-24.

Co-created CIViC, the open database of what cancer mutations mean, and the pVACtools neoantigen pipeline.

Marco Guzzo is a head and neck surgeon at INT Milan.

Has led AACR for more than four decades, growing it into the world's largest cancer research society.

Mariana Chavez-MacGregor is a breast oncologist who studies how care is delivered and leads SWOG's international work.

Leukaemia specialist who led E1910, the trial that put blinatumomab into frontline treatment for adults in remission.