Keynote Speaker ICEM2026: Sir Mike Stratton – Somatic mutation landscapes to track carcinogen exposures

Mike is an eminent physician-scientist whose primary research interests include identifying genes with inherited germline mutations that confer cancer susceptibility; discovering somatically mutated genes in cancer that may provide targets for new drug development; and understanding the mutational processes and mutational signatures present in normal and cancer cells.

In 1994, Mike established the genomic location of the high-risk breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2 on chromosome 13, and in 1995 he identified the gene itself. In 2000, he founded the Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute to systematically sequence cancer genomes and identify somatic mutations. This work led to the identification of cancer “driver” mutations in the BRAF gene in malignant melanoma. He sequenced the first complete cancer genome and developed the conceptual and computational framework for cataloguing and interpreting the mutational processes and mutational signatures that shape cancer genomes.

Together with colleagues, he currently investigates somatic mutation patterns in normal cell genomes across human tissues. He also analyses somatic mutations in normal and cancer genomes from countries worldwide to explore the existence of currently uncharacterised population exposures that may contribute to cancer risk.

Mike Stratton was Director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute from 2010 to 2023. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2013.