Ian Stratford

Weiss Medallist 2015

Ian Stratford is a chemist by training and he gained his PhD in 1975 in the Pharmacy Department at the University of Manchester where he studied the radiobiology of bacterial spores. During this time he acquired an interest in how oxygen could modify the radiation sensitivity of cells and this led to a move to work with Professor Ged Adams on the pre-clinical development of hypoxic cell radiosensitizers. This collaboration with Ged continued for 21 years, first at the Gray Laboratory, then subsequently at the Institute of Cancer Research/Royal Marsden Hospital and the MRC Radiobiology Unit. During this time, Ian’s research made significant contributions to the development of different classes of (hypoxia activated/enzyme directed) bioreductive drugs, understanding the metabolic and therapeutic consequences of manipulating tumour hypoxia and revealing the impact of the transcription factor HIF-1 on tumour growth and response to therapy. In 1996 Ian returned to the University of Manchester as Professor of Pharmacy, where he has continued to work on HIF-1 and developing methods to assess the level of hypoxia in human tumours. Most recently Ian’s work has focussed on the rational use of molecularly targeted drugs combined with radiotherapy and this work has been influential in the development of a variety of clinical trials. Ian has held national and international positions; these include membership of AICR and various CRUK grant committees, chairmanship of the EORTC translational research committee (2002-2006) and Chairman of the laboratory division (2006-2007), deputy chairman of COMARE (2008-2010), chairman of the LH Gray Trust (2010-2013) and most recently he serves on the NCRI CTRad executive. In addition, Ian was ARR chairman from 2000-2002. At the time of the award of the Weiss medal Ian has published 345 peer-reviewed papers and he has an h-index of 56.

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