Douglas Hanahan, Ph.D. Distinguished Scholar, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
Professor of Molecular Oncology, Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne
Research (Zurich/New York), and Professor of Molecular Oncology in the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Hanahan trained at MIT and Harvard University. He worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for a decade and then spent 21 years as a Professor at the University of California San Francisco before moving to EPFL in 2009. Hanahan is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a member of the US National Academies of Medicine and of Science, and of the European Molecular Biology Organization. He received an honorary degree from the University of Dundee (2011). In 2014, he was elected to the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and honored with the AACR’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Hanahan’s research is focused on elucidating mechanisms of tumor development and progression in genetically engineered mouse models of human cancer, a field Hanahan has helped pioneer, with a particular focus on functional contributions of the disparate cell types of the tumor microenvironment, and on applying knowledge of mechanisms to guide combinatorial therapeutic strategies with promise to improve the treatment of human cancers.