Antonis Antoniou

Professor of Cancer Risk Prediction
Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge

Professor Antoniou is a genetic epidemiologist and has made major contributions to the understanding of the genetic basis of common cancers, the development of cancer risk prediction models and the development of novel statistical methods. His work, using novel methods to analyse data from large population-based and family studies, has provided reliable estimates of cancer risks for carriers of mutations and BRCA1 and BRCA2 that are used every day in the clinic. His work showed that PALB2 was a high-risk breast cancer gene. He leads the coordinating centre of the international  Consortium of Modifiers of BRCA1/2 and has demonstrated the importance of genetic modifiers of cancer risk for BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers and that these modifiers lead to clinically important differences in cancer risk. For the past 20 years he led the development of the BOADICEA model, a comprehensive risk prediction model that is used to predict breast and ovarian cancer risks using genetic and non-genetic factors. BOADICEA is endorsed by clinical guidelines in several countries.  His team implemented BOADICEA into the CanRisk (www.canrisk.org) online tool used by clinicians across the world to counsel 1000s of patients every day, to guide decisions on screening and surgical and medical prevention of disease.