Prof. Mariano Barbacid
Director, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO), Spain
Prof. Barbacid got his Ph.D. in Madrid in 1974. From 1974-1978 he trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda. In 1978 he started his own group to work on the molecular biology of human tumours. His work led to the isolation of the first human cancer gene in the spring of 1982. In 1988, he joined the Bristol Myers-Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey where he became Vice President, Oncology Drug Discovery in 1995. In 1998, he returned to his native Madrid to create the CNIO. The relevance of his work has been recognised by several awards, including the Young Investigator Award of the American Association of Cancer Research (USA, 1986), Steiner Prize (Switzerland, 1988), Ipsen Prize (France, 1994), the Brupbaher Cancer Research Prize (Switzerland, 2005) and the Medal of Honour of the International Agency for Cancer Research (WHO) (Lyon, 2007). In addition, he has received Doctorates Honoris causa from the International University Menendez y Pelayo and from the University of Cantabria.