Professor John Neoptolemos is a leading pancreatic cancer specialist with over 98,000 scientific citations, at the Heidelberg University Hospital since 2017.

Previously he held the Chair of Surgery at Liverpool University from 1996. He has been the Chair of the European Study Group for Pancreatic Cancer (ESPAC) since 1991. He was made a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2007, a National Institutes Health Research Senior Fellow from 2011 and a Department of Health Platinum Award holder from 2004. He was the Clinical Chair for the UK NICE Guidelines on Pancreatic Cancer. He received Honorary Membership of the German Society of Surgery from 2012, and the Hungary Society of Surgery from 2014 and received a Nanjing Medical University Honorary Professorship from 2014. He was awarded the European Pancreatic Club (EPC) Lifetime Achievement Award (2013), the American Pancreatic Association Hirschberg Award for Pancreatic Cancer (2005), the Pancreas Cancer Research Ruth Brufsky Award (2017), and the Inherited Pancreas Diseases Henry Lynch Award (2018). He was elected to the Academia Europaea (2019), and made a Lifetime Member of the EPC and the International Association of Pancreatology both in 2024. He is presently leading the randomized trials ESPAC6 and 7 based on a pancreatic cancer transcriptomic signature.

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