Lung Cancer Promotion and Prevention: Myeloid Mayhem
The Maclyn McCarty Memorial Lecture
Event Details
- Type
- Friday Lecture Series
- Speaker(s)
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Charles Swanton, Ph.D., FRCP, deputy clinical director, The Francis Crick Institute
- Speaker bio(s)
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Non-small cell lung cancer arises not only through somatic mutation but via promotion of mutant progenitor clones within an inflammatory alveolar niche. Our recent work has demonstrated that clonal hematopoiesis (CHIP), particularly myeloid-biased CHIP, accelerates lung cancer progression, likely through amplifying pro-inflammatory signaling. Our work reveals that air pollution (PM2.5) has been shown to drive lung cancer promotion by stimulating the progenitor activity of EGFR-mutant alveolar type II (AT2) cells through an Il1B dependent pathway, mimicking chronic tissue injury. A recently developed 14-protein plasma signature predicts future lung cancer onset, reflecting a sustained AT2-cell wound-healing state in the distal lung microenvironment and enabling early detection and risk stratification years before clinical presentation. Ongoing work deciphering the mechanistic basis of inflammation-driven lung cancer promotion and opportunities for cancer prevention will be discussed.
Charles Swanton 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.
Dr. Swanton 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 and elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018, Fellow of the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research in 2020.
Dr. Swanton has been awarded several prizes including the San Salvatore prize for Cancer Research (2017) Massachusetts General Hospital, Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research (May 2018), the ESMO Award for Translational Cancer Research (2019), the Weizmann Institute Sergio Lombroso Award in Cancer Research (2021), the MSKCC Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research (2021), the Jeantet-Collen Prize for Translational Medicine (2024), the Gustave Roussy Prize (2025), and the INSERM International prize. 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 in October 2025. In 2026 he was the recipient of the Jan Wadenstrom Prize, the Sjoberg Prize, the Burkitt Medal and elected Fellow of the Science Museum.
- Open to
- Tri-Institutional