Celebrating academic excellence and achievements in fundamental cancer research that have the potential for future clinical development

We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2026 Pezcoller Foundation-EACR Translational Cancer Researcher Award is Samra Turajlic (Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, UK).

About the Award and Award Lecture

The Pezcoller Foundation-EACR Translational Cancer Researcher Award celebrates academic excellence and achievements in fundamental cancer research that have the potential for future clinical development. The award is presented annually to a researcher of excellence with no more than 15 years post-doctoral experience (or equivalent degree).

Samra Turajlic will give the prestigious Pezcoller Foundation – EACR Translational Cancer Researcher Award Lecture at the EACR 2026 Congress, will be invited to give a lecture in Trento, Italy, at the Pezcoller Foundation, and will receive a €10,000 honorarium.  

She comments, “I am deeply honoured to receive the 2026 Pezcoller Foundation–EACR Translational Cancer Researcher Award. This recognition reflects the dedication of the members of the Cancer Dynamics Laboratory (past and present). at the Francis Crick Institute and now the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute; our many collaborators and supporters; the outstanding clinical teams at The Royal Marsden and now The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, as well as the patients who inspire our work every day.”

About the Winner

Prof Samra Turajlic is a Clinician Scientist. In September 2025, Prof Turajlic was appointed the Director of the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute. 

She served as a Consultant Medical Oncologist at the Royal Marsden sub-specialising in the treatment of melanoma and kidney cancer from 2015 to August 2025. Her PhD research was in the field of melanoma genetics and targeted therapy resistance, where she contributed one of the first insights into the drivers of rare melanomas and the mechanism of resistance to BRAF inhibitors. In 2014, she was awarded a Cancer Research UK Clinician Scientist Fellowship at the CRUK London Research Institute when she began applying an evolutionary framework to understanding renal cancer reconciling many clinical observations. She became an independent Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in 2019 and a CRUK Advanced Clinician Scientist. 

Prof Turajlic’s work spans basic, translational and clinical research and she is the Chief Investigator of studies that aim to understand tumour initiation, metastasis and therapy resistance. Her lab contributes novel methods for investigating and diagnosing cancer for patient benefit. She is Faculty Lead for Basic and Translational Research of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO), and the lead of the 100K Genomes Project Partnership for Melanoma. Prof Turajlic is on the American Association for Cancer Research Cancer Data Science Task Force and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Gustave Roussy (France), Memorial Sloan Kettering Kidney Cancer SPORE (US), MD Anderson's TRACTION Platform (US), the Institute Jules Border (Belgium), Systems Biology Ireland Institute, and Genomics England (UK). She is a member of the WHO pathology working group, NCRI Bladder and Renal Cancer Clinical Studies Group, Uveal Melanoma Guidelines Group, ESMO Faculty member for genitourinary cancers and immunotherapy. 

She is a Trustee of patient advocacy groups, Kidney Cancer Support Network and Melanoma Focus and a Senior Editor at Macmillan Cancer Support. She receives research funding from Melanoma Research Alliance, National Institute for Health, and Department of Defence (all US), and CRUK, the MRC, Rosetrees Trust, the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, the RMH/ICR Biomedical Research Centre (all UK), as well as industry support from Roche and BMS. 

In 2022 she was awarded the ESMO Translational Research Award for the work impacting cancer science and translational medicine. She is a recipient of the UK COVID Cancer pandemic prize for her work on cancer and COVID-19 which informed health policy for cancer patients. Since 2024 she leads the UK consortium MANIFEST which aims to uncover the drivers of response, resistance, and toxicity of immune-oncology agents (https://www.manifest-io.org.uk/).

About the Pezcoller Foundation

The Pezcoller Foundation is a non-profit institution, whose goal is to promote scientific research against diseases which afflict mankind, specifically the fight against cancer. The Founder, Prof. Alessio Pezcoller, was Chief Surgeon at Santa Chiara Hospital in Trento, Italy. The Foundation was established in 1980.

The Foundation depends primarily on the substantial sum of money bequeathed by Professor Alessio Pezcoller, and by significant contributions from its sponsors: the Cassa di Risparmio di Trento e Rovereto Foundation, the Province of Trento, the Administrative Councils of Trento and of Rovereto and other occasional private donations.

Due to its ever increasing recognition within the international oncological community, the Foundation collaborates with some of the most important cancer institutions: the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR). The Pezcoller Awards are officially recognised during the international conferences of the two above mentioned associations.