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Departmental homepageProfessor Gilbertson trained as a paediatric oncologist in the UK and then worked in the USA at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital as Scientific and Comprehensive Cancer Centre Director, Executive Vice President and Lillian R Cannon Endowed Chair. In 2015 he returned to the UK as Li Ka Shing Chair of Oncology and Head of the Department of Oncology at the University of Cambridge, Director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre and Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.
Professor Gilbertson's teaching interests focus on the application of research to medicine, particularly oncology.
Professor Gilbertson's research focuses on understanding the link between normal development and the origins of cancer, with a particular focus on children's brain tumours. He has shown that clinically distinct subtypes of childhood medulloblastoma and ependymoma arise within different lineages of developing brain and are driven by distinct mutations in their DNA. His work has also shown that a combination of stem cell mutagenesis and extrinsic factors that enhance the proliferation of progenitor cell populations across multiple organs ultimately determines organ cancer risk.
