Research Director

Pierre Hainaut was born and educated in Belgium. He obtained an Msc in Science in 1980 and a PhD in Biological Sciences in 1987 from the University of Liège. From 1987 to 1994, he has been held postdoctoral positions in France (INSERM) and in the UK (University of Cambridge, University of York). Most of his laboratory research was focused on molecular genetics, particularly on the tumour suppressor protein p53. He joined IARC as staff scientist in 1995 where he became head of Molecular Carcinogenesis in 1999. He is an internationally recognized scientist in the p53 mutation field and hasled the development of the IARC TP53 database. His research has a focus on the molecular pathogenesis of cancers in low- and middle-resource countries, namely on tumours of the upper-aerodigestive tract (squamous cell carcinoma of the oesophagus in Iran, Kenya, Latin America; lung cancers) and on HepatoCellular Carcinoma (West Africa, Colombia, Egypt, Thailand, China). From 2002 to 2008, he has led the Gambia Hepatitis Intervention Study (GHIS), a large intervention trial aimed at testing the long-term efficacy of newborn HB vaccine against liver cancer in adults in West Africa. Since 2005 he has contributed to developing evidence-based standards for biobanks. Pierre Hainaut is frequently lecturing and giving courses in Post-Graduate programs in different countries and in international summer schools. In 2013 he was appointed as Professor at Strathclyde University. He has written about 375 articles and book chapters and is the editor of several books on molecular epidemiology and on p53. Pierre Hainaut is a Research Director at the International Prevention Research Institute.