Charles Swanton

Robert Charles Swanton is a British physician scientist specialising in oncology and cancer research. Swanton is a senior group leader at London's Francis Crick Institute,^[3] Royal Society Napier Professor in Cancer^[4] and thoracic medical oncologist at University College London^[5] and University College London Hospitals,^[6][7] co-director of the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence, and Chief Clinician of Cancer Research UK.^[8][9]

Charles Swanton FRS FMedSci FRCP
Swanton in 2018
Born	Robert Charles Swanton 1972 (age 52–53)[1] Poole, Dorset, England, UK[1]
Education	St Paul's School, London
Alma mater	University College London (MD, PhD)
Awards	Ellison–Cliffe Lecture (2017) EMBO Member (2017)
Scientific career
Fields	Cancer evolution[2]
Institutions	Francis Crick Institute University College London
Thesis	Viral cyclin disruption of mammalian cell cycle control mechanisms (1998)
Doctoral advisor	Nic Jones
Website	www.crick.ac.uk/research/a-z-researchers/researchers-p-s/charles-swanton/

Early life and education

Swanton was born in Poole, Dorset. As of 2017, his father Robert Howard Swanton (MD, FRCP) was a consultant cardiologist at UCL.^[10]

Swanton was educated at St Paul's School, London^[1] and completed his PhD in 1999^[11] at what was then the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories (now the Francis Crick Institute) and his Cancer Research UK clinician scientist/medical oncology training in 2008.^[7]

Career

Professor Swanton speaking at a conference in 2015

Swanton has combined ^[when?] his laboratory research with clinical duties as co-director of the CRUK Lung Cancer Centre, focussed on how tumours evolve over space and time.^[7] He has helped to define the branched evolutionary histories of solid tumours, processes that drive cancer cell-to-cell variation in the form of new cancer mutations or chromosomal instabilities, and the impact of such cancer diversity on effective immune surveillance and clinical outcome.^{[2][7][12][13]}

As of 2018, Swanton has been a co-founder of Achilles Therapeutics^[14] with Sergio Quezada, Karl Peggs and Mark Lowdell. Achilles Therapeutics is a UCL/CRUK and Francis Crick Institute^[15] biotechnology company funded by Syncona^[16] that develops adoptive T cell therapies targeting clonal/truncal neo-antigens present in every tumour cell to limit drug resistance and tumour evolution.^{[citation needed]}

Awards and honours

• 1997: Imperial Cancer Research Fund's (ICRF) Pontecorvo PhD thesis prize^[17]
• 2011: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP)^{[citation needed]}
• 2014: Jeremy Jass Prize in pathology
• 2015: Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci)^[18]
• 2015: Stand up to Cancer Translational Cancer Research Prize
• 2016: Glaxo Smithkline Biochemical Society Prize^{[citation needed]}
• 2016: San Salvatore prize for Cancer Research^[19]
• 2017: CRUK Translational Research Prize in 2017,^[20]
• 2017: EMBO Member in 2017^[21]
• 2017: Ellison-Cliffe Medal by the Royal Society of Medicine
• 2018: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)^[7]
• 2018: Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Centre Kraft Prize^[22]
• 2018: Gordon Hamilton Fairley Medal and Lecture^[7][23]
• 2019: ESMO Translational Research Award
• 2020: Addario Lung Cancer Foundation Award and Lecture
• 2021: Weizmann Institute - Sergio Lambroso Award in Cancer Research
• 2021: Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research
• 2024: Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine.^[24]

Personal life