Professor Sir Mike Stratton, FMedSci FRS

Senior Group Leader

Mike Stratton is a Senior Group Leader in the Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutation Programme. His primary research interests have been in the genetics of cancer. His early research focused on inherited susceptibility. Mike mapped and identified the major high-risk breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2 and subsequently a series of moderate-risk breast cancer and other cancer susceptibility genes.

In 2000 Mike initiated the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Sanger Institute which conducts systematic genome-wide searches for somatic mutations in human cancer. Through these studies he discovered somatic mutations of the BRAF gene in malignant melanoma and several other mutated cancer genes in lung, renal, breast and other cancers. He has described the basic patterns of somatic mutation in cancer genomes revealing underlying DNA mutational and repair processes.

Mike is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and was Knighted by the Queen in 2013.

My timeline

• The 2016 Mike Price Gold Medal Award, European Association of Cancer Research

• The ESHG Award, European Society of Human Genetics

• Fellow of the AACR Academy

• The AACR Distinguished Lecturer in Breast Cancer Research Award

• The Ernst W Bertner Award, MD Anderson Cancer Centre

• The Sergio Lombroso Award in Cancer Research, Weizmann Institute

• The GHA Clowes Award, American Association of Cancer Research, USA

• The Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine

• Knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours List

• Royal Physiographical Society Medal, Lund, Sweden

• Estella Medrano Memorial Lecture Award, Society for Melanoma Research

• Appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Wellcome Genome Campus.

• The Massachusetts General Hospital Award in Cancer Research

• The Lila Gruber Award for Cancer Research, American Academy of Dermatology

• Appointed as the Director of the Sanger Institute

• Member of EMBO

• The C. Chester Stock Award, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre

• Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation

• Fellow of the Royal Society

• The BioMedicum Helsinki Medal, Finland

• The AstraZeneca Award, Biochemical Society

• Appointed as Deputy Director of the Sanger Institute

• The Lennox K Black Award for Excellence in Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University

• The Tom Connors Award, British Association of Cancer Research

• Member of the Sanger Institute's Board of Management

• Initiated the Cancer Genome Project and became the Head of this Programme

• Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences

• Appointed as Professor of Cancer Genetics and Chair of the newly constitute section of Cancer Genetics at the Institute of Cancer Research

• Reader in the Molecular Genetics of Cancer, Institute of Cancer Research

• Honorary Consultant, Royal Marsden Hospital

• Team Leader in Molecular Carcinogenesis at the Institute of Cancer Research

• Obtained the MRCPath and qualified as a Consultant Pathologist - Hammersmith and Maudsley Hospital

• Senior Registrar, Department of Neuropathology, Institute of Psychiatry

• Conducted research for a PhD on the molecular biology of cancer at the Institute Cancer Research

• MRC Training Fellow, Institute of Cancer Research and Institute of Psychiatry

• Trained as a histopathologist

• Senior House Office - Pathology - Westminster Hospital

• Research Fellow, Institute of Psychiatry

• House Physician at Beckenham Hospital

• House Surgeon at Guys Hospital

• Qualified in medicine at Oxford