Professor Anthony Swerdlow

Aetiological Epidemiology Unit
The Aetiological Epidemiology Team work on a range of issues where epidemiological methods can help to understand the causes of cancer. Several studies are investigating the aetiology of specific malignancies and several investigating the long-term risks of cancer in people who have had particular diseases and/or received potentially carcinogenic treatments. The studies include case-control studies and several large cohort studies. A major focus is collaboration with geneticists in The Institute of Cancer Research. 

This work aims to discover how behaviours and exposures may affect cancer risks in people and how this may vary according to their inherited predispositions.

Professor Swerdlow’s work focuses on investigating the causes of cancer in people, along with the long-term effects of cancer treatments. He is the Head of the Epidemiology Section at The Institute of Cancer Research and an Honorary Consultant in Epidemiology at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Professor Swerdlow trained in medicine at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and held junior posts in clinical medicine before beginning his career in epidemiology. He worked at the University of Glasgow’s Department of Community Medicine and the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys before moving in 1987 to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Professor Swerdlow joined the ICR in 2000. “The ICR is focussed on undertaking first class research, and the facilities and atmosphere are very much directed to facilitating it. It is a great place to work,” he says.

Professor Swerdlow has been elected a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, the Society of Biology and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and is Chair of the independent Advisory Group on Non-Ionizing Radiation at the Health Protection Agency and a board member of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection.