Christopher Lord - Biography#

Chris Lord (1970) graduated in Biochemistry in 1993 from the University of Surrey and gained his PhD in Genetics from Oxford (1997), working with John Todd and Richard Gardner. After post-doctoral work in Cambridge, Lord moved to ICR, London in 2000 to work with Alan Ashworth. Lord was part of the team that identified the synthetic lethality between BRCA1/2 and PARP inhibitors (Nature 2005, Cancer Res 2006), an observation that led to a number of clinical trials he played a role in (Cancer Discov 2018, NEJM 2015, NEJM 2022) and ultimately, the approval of PARP inhibitors for the treatment of cancers.

Lord became a Reader at ICR in 2014 and then Professor and Deputy Director of the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at the ICR in 2017. Since his post-doctoral work, Lord has become widely recognised for his contribution to understanding and exploiting genetic concepts including synthetic lethality to treat cancer, playing a lead role in uncovering additional synthetic lethal interactions associated with PARP inhibitors (Cancer Res 2014, EMBO Mol Med 2012, Sci Transl Med 2010, Nature 2012, Nat Genet 2011, EMBO Mol Med 2009, Oncogene 2013, EMBO J 2008), identifying mechanisms of resistance to agents used in cancer treatment (Cancer Discov 2017, Nature 2008, Nat Med 2013, Nature 2018, Cancer Cell 2008, PNAS 2012, Oncogene 2014), and understanding the precise mechanisms of action by which PARP inhibitors work (Clin Cancer Res 2013, Science 2017, Nat Commun 2018, Nat Cell Biol 2022) and the first approaches to targeting PARP inhibitor resistance with Pol-theta inhibitors (Nat Commun 2021). Using the same concept and the application of large-scale functional genomics, Lord uncovered actionable synthetic lethal interactions associated with other cancer driver gene defects, including those associated with Rb, ARID1A or E-cadherin (Nat Commun 2016, Cancer Discov 2018, Cancer Discov 2018, Cell Rep 2018, Oncogene 2018).

Lord is author of more than 220 original peer-reviewed publications and has a h-Index of 98. In many cases, the pre-clinical work he has carried out uncovered new biology and led to new clinical trials, exemplifying the translational nature of his work.

Lord was awarded the 2022 AACR Team Science Award, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the European Academy of Cancer Sciences.