John Yarnold

Weiss Medallist 2017

John Yarnold is Professor of Clinical Oncology at ICR. He was a clinical oncologist for many years but has always been very active in research, and has played an important role in interfacing basic and clinical research. He has led a large number of randomised clinical trials addressing issues of relevance to radiotherapy. He has more than 200 publications, many in Lancet, and his research has substantially influenced clinical practice for radiotherapy both within the UK and worldwide. An important aspect of his work has focused on addressing the “dogma” that normal cells show fraction sensitivity whilst tumour cells are sensitive to the total dose of radiation. Central to this was the START (UK Standardisation of Breast Radiotherapy) trials, which examined the clinical benefit of fraction size and exposed that hyperfractionation was of no benefit for certain tumours including breast cancer, a finding which has fundamentally influenced radiotherapy practice and benefitted patients.

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