Professor Sir Mike Stratton, FMedSci FRS
Senior Group Leader
Mike established the genomic location of the high risk breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2 on chromosome 13 in 1994 and then identified the gene itself in 1995, subsequently discovering multiple other inherited cancer susceptibility genes. In 2000 he established the Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute to systematically sequence cancer genomes for somatic mutations in order to improve diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the disease. This identified cancer “driver” mutations in the BRAF gene in malignant melanoma, leading to the development of BRAF targeted therapies for melanoma, and several other somatically mutated cancer genes in a range of cancer types.
He sequenced the first complete cancer genome and developed the conceptual and computational framework for cataloguing and understanding the mutational processes and mutational signatures contributing to the mutations in cancer genomes.
Together with colleagues he currently explores the somatic mutation patterns of normal cell genomes across tissues of the human body and uses somatic mutations in normal cell and cancer genomes from countries around the world to explore the existence of currently uncharacterised population exposures that may lead to cancer.
Mike Stratton was Director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute from 2010-2023. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 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
Appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Wellcome Genome Campus.
Estella Medrano Memorial Lecture Award, Society for Melanoma Research
Royal Physiographical Society Medal, Lund, Sweden
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
Obtained the MRCPath and qualified as a Consultant Pathologist - Hammersmith and Maudsley Hospital
Team Leader in Molecular Carcinogenesis at the Institute of Cancer Research
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