Julian Downward obtained his bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and then studied for his PhD degree in Biochemistry in the laboratory of Michael Waterfield at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London, where he established in 1984 that the retroviral oncogene v-erbB was derived from the EGF receptor gene, leading to an ISI ‘citation classic’ publication. In 1986, he moved to Robert Weinberg's laboratory at the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, where he began work on Ras oncoproteins. In 1989, he started his own lab at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London (renamed Cancer Research UK in 2002). The lab has provided insights into the molecular mechanism of regulation of Ras proteins by growth factors, and also the identification of the downstream targets of Ras, including Raf and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase. More recently, he has worked on the impact of Ras signalling pathways on the control of cell survival and the interplay between cell adhesion signalling and control of apoptosis. He is the CRUK coordinator of the Sanger Institute/Cancer Research UK/Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research microarray consortium and of the Netherlands Cancer Institute/Cancer Research UK RNA interference library consortium. He was elected to the membership of the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 1995. He belongs to the Editorial Boards of Cell, Science and Molecular Cell.

Dr Julian Downward