The Cancer Prevention Research Conference 2026

Andrew T. Chan, MD, MPH is a physician-scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) known for his work in cancer prevention, with a focus on the role of pharmacologic preventives, diet, and the gut microbiome in cancer. As a practicing gastroenterologist and molecular epidemiologist, he has pioneered precision prevention approaches through translational research which spans population cohorts to clinical trials.

Professor Chan is the Daniel K. Podolsky Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He holds leadership roles at MGH, including Chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Director of Epidemiology at the MGH Cancer Center. He is co-leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program of the Dana-Farber Harvard Cancer Center.

Among his honors, Professor Chan is an American Cancer Society Research Professor, an Outstanding Investigator of the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He serves on the NCI Director’s Board of Scientific Advisors, the Governing Board of the American Gastroenterological Association, the Population Sciences Working Group of the American Association for Cancer Research as past chair, and the Health Equity Committee of Stand Up to Cancer.

Graham A. Colditz, MD, DrPH became interested in the potential of disease prevention during his medical training at the University of Queensland in Australia. Now, over 40 years later, he is an internationally recognized epidemiologist and public health expert on the causes and prevention of chronic disease, particularly breast cancer. Translating this research into clinical practice and meaningful public outreach has been a prime driver of his work. This includes, most recently, the integration of AI models using mammograms to accurately assess breast cancer risk in diverse populations, allowing more personalized screening and risk management.  

Christina Curtis, PhD, MSc is the RZ Cao Professor of Medicine, Genetics, and Biomedical Data Science, Senior Vice Chair of Research in the department of Medicine and Director of AI and Cancer Genomics at Stanford University. Dr. Curtis’s laboratory leverages computational modeling, high-throughput molecular profiling and experimentation to develop new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer. Her

research has redefined the molecular map of breast cancer and led to new paradigms in understanding the origins of human cancers, as well as how they evolve and metastasize.

Dr. Curtis’s accomplishments have been recognized by numerous awards, including the 2018 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's Pioneer Award, the 2022 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic

Science, the 2024 Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction in breast cancer research and 2024 AACR - Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) Award for Outstanding Achievement in Breast Cancer Research, as well as the 2025 European Society for Molecular Oncology (ESMO) Translational Award and the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research. She is a Susan G. Komen Scholar and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator.

In addition to her research, Dr. Curtis is an influential voice in the scientific, clinical and biopharma communities. She is an advisor to multiple academic institutes, as well as to biopharma and biotech. She has served on the editorial boards of journals, spanning computational biology to precision oncology, including Science, Cancer Discovery and Molecular Cancer Research. Dr. Curtis was a member of the AACR Board of Directors

and is the chair of the AACR Data Science Task Force. She is also active within several clinical trial and cooperative groups, including the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, and American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ECOG/ACRIN), where she leads

translational bioinformatics.

Charles Swanton, FRCP BSc PhD completed his MBPhD training in 1999 at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories and Cancer Research UK clinician scientist/medical oncology training in 2008. He is a senior Principal Investigator of the Cancer Evolution and Genome Instability Laboratory, and Deputy clinical director at the Francis Crick Institute. He combines his research with clinical duties at UCLH as a Consultant thoracic oncologist, focused on how tumours evolve over space and time. His research branched evolutionary histories of solid tumours, processes that drive cancer cell-to-cell variation in the form of new cancer mutations or chromosomal instabilities, and the impact of such cancer diversity on effective immune surveillance and clinical outcome. Charles is chief investigator of TRACERx, a lung cancer evolutionary study, the national PEACE autopsy program, and the TRACERx EVO study.

Charles was made Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in April 2011, appointed Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015, awarded the Royal Society Napier Professorship in Cancer in 2016, appointed Cancer Research UK’s Chief Clinician in 2017, elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018, Fellow of the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research in 2020, and appointed Deputy Clinical Director of the Francis Crick Institute in 2023. He is an editorial board member of Cell, Plos Medicine, Cancer Discovery and Annals of Oncology and an advisory board member for Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology and Cancer Cell. In 2016 he co-founded Achilles Therapeutics, a UCL/CRUK/Francis Crick Institute spin-out company, assessing the efficacy of T cells targeting clonal neoantigens.

Charles has been awarded several prizes including the Stand up to Cancer Translational Cancer Research Prize (2015), GlaxoSmithkline Biochemical Society Prize (2016), San Salvatore prize for Cancer Research (2017) and the Ellison-Cliffe Medal, Royal Society of Medicine (2017), recipient of the Gordon Hamilton Fairley Medal (2018), Massachusetts General Hospital, Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research (May 2018), the ESMO Award for Translational Cancer Research (2019), Addario Lung Cancer Foundation Award and Lectureship, International Lung Cancer Congress (July 2020), the Weizmann Institute Sergio Lombroso Award in Cancer Research (2021), International Society of Liquid Biopsy (ISLB) Research Award (2021), the Memorial Sloan Kettering Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research (2021), UCLH Celebrating Excellence Award for Contribution to World Class Research (2022), Inductee to OncLive’s Giants of Cancer Care awards program (2023), SpringerNature CDD Award (2023), the Jeantet-Collen Prize for Translational Medicine (2024), and the Gustave Roussy Prize (2025). In 2025, he was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, recognising his contributions to understanding tumour evolution and advancing translational cancer research.

Dr. Kala Visvanathan MD, FRACP, MHS FASCO is a Professor at Johns Hopkins University with joint appointments in Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and in Medical Oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. She directs the Clinical Cancer Genetics and Prevention Service and is a senior member of the Breast and Gynecologic Malignancies and Cancer Prevention and Control Programs. Dr. Visvanathan’s work focuses on precision prevention and early detection of breast and ovarian cancers, with a strong emphasis on equitable implementation. Her research integrates biomarker-based risk stratification to guide prevention strategies, therapeutic repositioning of existing medications, and dietary interventions to improve cancer outcomes. She has led randomized prevention trials and large population-based studies to identify high-risk groups, clarify cancer etiology, and evaluate prevention and early detection approaches. Nationally, she co-led the development of U.S. clinical guidelines on breast cancer risk reduction and helped establish frameworks for integrating observational evidence into clinical decision-making.

Dr. Visvanathan has chaired prevention committees for ASCO and AACR, served on their Cancer Prevention Working Groups, and been a member on NCCN panels for Genetic/Familial High-Risk Assessment and Breast Cancer Risk Reduction. She also contributed to a U.S. Surgeon General’s Report and previously chaired the Advisory Board for the Maryland Cancer Registry as part of the Maryland State Cancer Council. As a dedicated mentor, she has trained her trainees, who have received national recognition for their work.

Kwee Yong is Professor of Haematology and Head of Research Department of Haematology at UCL. She is a consultant haematologist at UCLH, with a special interest in multiple myeloma.

She leads national studies in multiple myeloma, ranging from national Phase 3 trials to first-in-human studies of novel therapies, including CAR-T cell studies. She runs a laboratory programme working on aspects of tumour biology and immunology in myeloma and precursor conditions. A particular research interest is smouldering myeloma and understanding the biological and immunological basis of progression to multiple myeloma.