Biography
Adrian L Harris has been Cancer Research UK Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Oxford since 1989 and directed the Cancer Research UK Molecular Oncology Laboratories at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (WIMM) until 2017. He was a Consultant Medical Oncologist and is a Professorial Fellow of St Hugh’s College Oxford. He was Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Cancer for 15 years, and on the Editorial Board of Cancer Cell. He is a Senior Investigator in the National Institute of Health Research and a founder Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was a Trustee and Chairman of the Science Strategy Committee for Breast Cancer NOW.
He was a ‘Highly Cited Researcher’ ranking among the top 1% most cited for their subject field and year of publication. He has published over 500 articles and there are over 196,000 citations to them, Google Scholar h index 213.
He has received a Platinum Merit Award from then National Health Service for the last 15 years, given to the 200 most outstanding consultants for all specialities.
He trained in Medicine and Biochemistry at Liverpool University, did a DPhil at Oxford University then trained at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Medical Oncology. He was appointed Professor of Clinical Oncology at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1982. From 1988-2017 he was the first Professor of Medical Oncology at Oxford University and developed the Department. He has managed breast cancer patients for over 35 years. He continues run research programmes in Oxford University.
His major laboratory interests involve the role of hypoxia in breast tumour biology, tumour angiogenesis, the metabolic response to hypoxia, and hypoxia-induced cell death. He has conducted many predictive and prognostic studies in breast cancer, early exploratory phase trials in new drug development. He used molecular pathology and biomarkers to develop new agents with pharmacodynamic monitoring for proof of target engagement.
- Alaa AM, Gurdasani D, Harris AL, Rashbass J, van der Schaar M. Machine learning to guide the use of adjuvant therapies for breast cancer. Nature Machine Intelligence 2021; 3: 716-726.
- Skwarski M, McGowan DR, Belcher E, Di Chiara F, Stavroulias D, McCole M, Derham JL, Chu K-Y, Teoh E, Chauhan J. Mitochondrial inhibitor atovaquone increases tumor oxygenation and inhibits hypoxic gene expression in patients with non–small cell lung cancer. Clinical Cancer Research 2021; 27: 2459-2469.
- Westbrook RL, Bridges E, Roberts J, Escribano-Gonzalez C, Eales KL, Vettore LA, Walker PD, Vera-Siguenza E, Rana H, Cuozzo F. Proline synthesis through PYCR1 is required to support cancer cell proliferation and survival in oxygen-limiting conditions. Cell reports 2022; 38.
- Di Giovannantonio M, Hartley F, Elshenawy B, Barberis A, Hudson D, Shafique HS, Allott VE, Harris DA, Lord SR, Haider S. Defining hypoxia in cancer: A landmark evaluation of hypoxia gene expression signatures. Cell Genomics 2025; 5.
- Pinho MP, Antoun E, Sandhar B, Shu T, Gao F, Yang X, Bates A, Cerundolo L, Hamid MH, Maldonado-Perez D. Tumor-specific CD8 T cell characterization in HR+ breast cancer reveals an impaired antitumoral response in patients with lymph node metastasis. Cell Reports Medicine 2025; 6.
