Karol Sikora

Professor Sikora is a British physician specialising in oncology. He is medical director of Rutherford Health, and Director of Medical Oncology at the Bahamas Cancer Centre. He is also Professor of Medicine at the University of Buckingham, and a partner in and dean of Buckingham's medical school.

Professor Sikora studied medical science and biochemistry at Cambridge, where he obtained a double first.

After clinical training he became a house physician at The Middlesex Hospital and registrar in oncology at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He later became a research student at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge working with Nobel Prize winner, Dr Sydney Brenner.

He obtained his PhD and became a clinical fellow at Stanford University, California before returning to direct the Ludwig Institute in Cambridge.

He has been Clinical Director for Cancer Services at Hammersmith for 12 years and established a major cancer research laboratory there funded by the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He chaired Help Hammer Cancer, an appeal that raised £8m towards the construction of the new Cancer Centre at Hammersmith. He became Deputy Director (Clinical Research) of the ICRF.From 1997 to 1999 he was Chief of the WHO Cancer Program and from 1999 to 2002 and Vice President, Global Clinical Research (Oncology) at Pharmacia Corporation.

He has published over 300 papers and written or edited 20 books and is on the editorial board of several journals and is the founding editor of Gene Therapy and Cancer Strategy.

He was a member of the UK Health Department’s Expert Advisory Group on Cancer (the Calman-Hine Committee), the Committee on Safety of Medicines and remains an adviser to the WHO. He currently directs a cancer drug donation programme in Africa.