Charles Swanton

Charles Swanton is a Professor at University College London (UCL) and a Consultant Medical Oncologist at UCL Hospitals. He holds the Chair in Personalised Cancer Medicine and is Chief Investigator of the CRUK TRACERx study on lung cancer evolution. His research focuses on genomic diversity in cancers, drug resistance mechanisms, and clinical applications of cancer evolution insights.

• Affiliations: Francis Crick Institute (Group Leader), Royal Marsden Hospital (Consultant), UCL Cancer Institute (Chair)

Education: MBPhD from UCL, postdoctoral training at Cancer Research UK (CRUK) London Research Institute. He completed his medical oncology specialization in 2008.

Research interests include intratumor heterogeneity, clonal evolution, immune evasion, and translational cancer therapies. His work has led to discoveries about HLA loss, DNA replication stress, and extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in driving cancer diversity.

Notable contributions include identifying clonal driver neoantigen loss under therapy pressures and developing methods like ImmuneLENS for immune dysregulation analysis. His work spans lung, breast, and colorectal cancers, with clinical trials evaluating targeted therapies and immunotherapies.

• Awards: Napier Professor of Cancer Medicine (2016), Ellison-Cliffe Medal (2017), Kraft Prize (2018)

He leads collaborative initiatives such as the TRACERx Lung Cancer Center of Excellence and contributed to NHS-Galleri multi-cancer early detection trials. His grants and collaborations focus on biomarker development and precision oncology.

Labs/Teams: Translational Cancer Therapeutics Lab (Crick Institute), TRACERx consortium, and multi-disciplinary groups studying ctDNA and immune responses.