Stanford Health Care / Stanford Cancer Institute

Co-invented the CAPP-Seq method for reading tumour DNA in blood and used it to track lymphoma and lung cancer.

Christina Curtis

Professor of Medicine, Genetics and Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University

Showed that colorectal cancers grow as a 'Big Bang' and that metastasis can be seeded years before diagnosis.

Crystal L. Mackall

Director, Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy; Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor

Crystal Mackall is a cell therapy pioneer whose team brought GD2 CAR-T to children with brain tumours that had no treatment.

Daniel K. Ludwig

Shipping magnate who endowed the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in 1971

In 1971 he put nearly all of his international holdings into a cancer research institute that carries his name reluctantly; it has since spent more than $1.8 billion of its own money on cancer science.

Heather Wakelee is a lung cancer leader who led the first adjuvant immunotherapy trial to change practice.

Isolated the first blood stem cells and discovered the 'don't eat me' signal CD47 on cancer cells.

Led the futibatinib trial and defined how FGFR2-driven bile duct cancers become resistant to targeted drugs.

Radiation oncologist who showed a blood test can detect leftover lung cancer months before scans.

Michelle Monje

Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University; HHMI Investigator

Founded cancer neuroscience and led the GD2 CAR-T trial that produced the first regressions of diffuse midline glioma.

Priscilla Chan

Paediatrician who, with Mark Zuckerberg, founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the CZ Biohub

She and Mark Zuckerberg founded the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub with the stated mission to cure or prevent all disease; its programmes include engineering the immune system to detect cancer and other diseases early.

Chairs NRG Oncology, the largest US radiotherapy cooperative group, and leads head and neck de-escalation trials.

Developed the first antibody treatment for cancer, rituximab, and still works on training the immune system against lymphoma.

Sanford I. Weill

Banker whose $100 million matching grant launched the Weill Cancer Hub West at UCSF and Stanford

In May 2025 the Weill Family Foundation's $100 million challenge launched a $200 million, ten-year cancer research partnership between UCSF and Stanford, the two big Bay Area cancer centres that usually compete.

Sean Parker

Founder of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy

In 2016 he founded and funded an institute that runs cancer immunotherapy research as one network across a dozen leading cancer centres, sharing data, samples and patents rather than competing for them.

Steven Artandi is a telomerase biologist who directs Stanford's cancer institute.

Stanford dermatologist who led MAVORIC, the trial that established mogamulizumab for mycosis fungoides and Sézary syndrome after earlier treatment.