Prof Hickman is an internationally known scientist who trained in pharmacy at Aston University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Cancer Research London, he held University posts in molecular pharmacology in Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester and as a visiting scientist at Yale University. As a Director of the Cancer Research Campaign’s (now CRUK) Experimental Chemotherapy group in Birmingham he was lead pharmacologist for the discovery of the drug Temozolomide used to treat brain tumours. He worked on the role of apoptosis in determining anticancer drug sensitivity and resistance, particularly the role of the BCL-2 family of proteins. He talked about his work on apoptosis in 1998 at the invitation of the Nobel Forum in Stockholm. He was invited again to speak at a Nobel Symposium in 2018, this time on personalised cancer medicine. Professor Hickman moved to Paris in 2000 to direct cancer drug discovery at Servier. He retired in 2010 and then coordinated the European Union Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) consortium PREDECT (www.predect.eu). In March 2018, he co-organised an international meeting at the Francis Crick Institute entitled “The Challenges Preventing Cancer Cure”."