Crick Institute’s Swanton wins US$1mill Sjöberg Prize

The Swedish award – worth US$1 million, including US$0.9 million for research funding – cited Swanton’s achievements “for discoveries concerning clonal evolution of cancer cells and its importance for tumour growth and metastasis.” 

Judges noted his contribution to extending fundamental knowledge about evolution in tumours, adding his discoveries could help explain why treatments sometimes fail to work, as well as leading the way to more accurate diagnostics.

Urban Lendahl, secretary of the Sjöberg Prize Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences remarked on the winner’s work on developing a better understanding of what happens inside tumours to cause mutations.

“He started with a fairly simple experiment, where he divided a kidney tumour into pieces and then analysed each one. He saw that they were all different, so there must have been a process that led to mutations that only exist in specific parts of the tumour,” said Lendahl. 

Key to Swanton’s work was his role in initiating the British research project TRACERx to study large numbers of patients over time.

“A great number of researchers followed hundreds of cancer patients for many years. Swanton’s focus was lung cancer, and the project allowed him to study tumours from the initial diagnosis all the way through treatment and any relapses,” added Lendahl.

He summarised Swanton’s discoveries as a “treasure trove”, available now for other researchers. Swanton also developed a blood test to identify cancer patients in the early stage of relapse.

Swanton said he hoped to use resources to investigate how the first cancer cell begins its journey, a subject about which relatively little is known.

He added: “I hope this prize money is going to allow us to really understand how that very first step in tumour initiation and evolution occurs. If we can understand that process, I hope we can intercept it and prevent it from happening and therefore prevent cancers from emerging.”

 The Sjöberg Prize – awarded this year for 2025 – will be presented to Swanton by Sweden’s monarch King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Academy’s Annual meeting on 31 March. It will be preceded by the award lecture will be held at Uppsala Comprehensive Cancer Centre (UCCC) the day before.

It was established with a donation from businessman Bengt Sjöberg, who died from complications due to cancer in 2017, just three days after the first award winner was announced.

The Sjöberg is one of the three largest oncology related awards set up in the last decade. Of the others, the US -based Stephenson Global Pancreatic Cancer Research Institute’s Stephenson Global Prize for pancreatic cancer research was founded in 2024 and also provides US$1 million annually.

Additionally, Cancer Research UK and the US National Cancer Institute set up the Cancer Grand Challenges in 2020, providing multimillion awards over five years.

To learn more about the research behind the 2025 Sjöberg Prize and a short interview with Charles Swanton, click blow. 

Pic (clockwise from top left): Sjöberg Prize, Charles Swanton (pic Michael Bowles), Bengt Sjöberg.