# Charles Swanton

Source: https://onco.cc/people/charles-swanton/  
OnCo record `charles-swanton` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Leads TRACERx, the study that follows lung cancers as they evolve, and showed how air pollution can trigger lung cancer without new mutations.

## Summary

Charles Swanton is Deputy Clinical Director of The Francis Crick Institute and Chief Clinician of Cancer Research UK, and is involved in Cancer Grand Challenges. His specialisms are tumour evolution, lung cancer, circulating tumour DNA, and air pollution and cancer. He leads TRACERx, the programme that sequenced lung cancers over time to map clonal evolution, circulating tumour DNA dynamics and metastasis, using whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing and liquid biopsy. His Nature papers describe the evolution of non-small-cell lung cancer metastases in TRACERx and show how air pollutants promote lung adenocarcinoma through inflammation acting on pre-existing mutations rather than new ones. His Crick profile and PubMed listing are linked.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Role: Deputy Clinical Director, Francis Crick Institute; Chief Clinician, Cancer Research UK
- Specialisms: Tumour evolution; Lung cancer; Circulating tumour DNA; Air pollution and cancer

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Swanton
- Crick profile: https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/charles-swanton
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Swanton%20C%5BAuthor%5D%20TRACERx

## Connected records

- cancers: [Non-small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/nsclc/)
- technologies: [Liquid biopsy (ctDNA)](https://onco.cc/technologies/liquid-biopsy/), [Whole-exome & whole-genome sequencing](https://onco.cc/technologies/wes-wgs/)
- institutions: [Cancer Grand Challenges](https://onco.cc/institutions/cancer-grand-challenges/), [Cancer Research UK](https://onco.cc/institutions/cruk/), [The Francis Crick Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/francis-crick/), [University College London Hospitals / UCL Cancer Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/uclh/), [Wellcome](https://onco.cc/institutions/wellcome/)
- terms: [Ageing tissue and clonal fields: cancer as a disease of old tissue](https://onco.cc/terms/ageing-tissue-field-theory/), [Aneuploidy and chromosomal instability as the cause of cancer](https://onco.cc/terms/aneuploidy-theory-of-cancer/), [Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA)](https://onco.cc/terms/ctdna/), [Clonal evolution and the ecological view of cancer](https://onco.cc/terms/clonal-evolution-theory/)
- key papers: [Gerlinger: a single biopsy misses most of the mutations in a kidney tumour](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-gerlinger-intratumour-heterogeneity-nejm-2012/), [Lung adenocarcinoma promotion by air pollutants](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-hill-lung-adenocarcinoma-air-pollutants-nature-2023/), [Performance of a multi-cancer early detection test in the randomized controlled NHS-Galleri trial](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-nhs-galleri-performance-nat-med-2026/), [Phylogenetic ctDNA analysis depicts early-stage lung cancer evolution](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-abbosh-phylogenetic-ctdna-lung-cancer-nature-2017/), [TRACERx 421: the full-cohort picture of how lung cancer evolves and which subclones drive relapse](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-tracerx-evolution-nature-2023/), [TRACERx first 100: tracking how lung cancers evolve, and how chromosomal chaos predicts relapse](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-tracerx-100-nejm-2017/)
- trials: [NHS-Galleri](https://onco.cc/trials/nhs-galleri/), [TRACERx](https://onco.cc/trials/tracerx/)
- ideas: [A global rapid tissue donation network for metastatic disease](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-bio2-rapid-autopsy-commons/), [Check whether a tumour can still show itself to the immune system](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-bio2-antigen-presentation-triage/), [Ten-year awards for scientists who commit to one hard problem](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-ten-year-hard-problem-awards/)

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