Carlos Caldas's Biography

Carlos Caldas, Group Leader, Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute

Professor Caldas holds the Chair of Cancer Medicine at the University of Cambridge since 2002. He heads the Breast Cancer Functional Genomics Laboratory at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute. He is an Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Lead of the Cambridge Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre, Co-Lead of the Cancer Theme at the NIHR Cambridge BRC and Director of the Cambridge Breast Cancer Research Unit. He is Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Pathologists and the Society of Biology. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Medical Sciences in 2004 and a Fellow of the European Academy of Cancer Sciences in 2010. He was selected as an NIHR Senior Investigator in 2012.

His current research focus is in the functional genomics of breast cancer and its biological and clinical implications. His laboratory recently completed the analysis of the largest genomic and transcriptomic analysis of breast cancers and completely redefined the molecular taxonomy of the disease, revealing novel subtypes and their respective drivers [Curtis et al, Nature 2012]. They also completed miRNA profiling of 1,300 of the same tumors and this is uncovering a new role for miRNAs as modulators of the immune response in a subset of breast cancers [Dvinge et al, Nature 2013]. His group also co-lead seminal studies that define the clonal heterogeneity of triple negative breast cancers [Shah et al, Nature 2012] and the patterns of whole-genome ER binding in primary tumors, which reveal new biology [Ross-Ines, Nature 2012]. Finally his group has co-lead studies that established ctDNA as a monitoring biomarker [Dawson et al, NEJM 2013] and a liquid biopsy to unravel therapy resistance [Murtaza et al, Nature 2013]. More recently his laboratory has been developing the use of patient-derived tumour cells as a model system for breast cancer.