Professor Chris Lord is Deputy Head of Division, Team Leader of the CRUK Gene Function Laboratory and Professor of Cancer Genomics in the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research, London. Much of his work focuses on exploiting genetic concepts such as synthetic lethality to identify new approaches to treating cancer and to understand the variable effectiveness of existing treatments.

Chris started his career with PhD training in disease genetics with John Todd and Richard Gardner at the University of Oxford before carrying out a Postdoctoral Fellowship with Todd at the University of Cambridge. Chris joined the ICR London as a Postdoctoral Fellow with Alan Ashworth in 2000, where he was joint first author on a paper describing the synthetic lethal interaction between BRCA-tumour suppressor genes and PARP inhibitors (Nature 2005), observations that eventually led to the use of these drugs for the treatment of breast, ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancers.