As a young medical student at the University of Perugia in his native Italy, Pier Paolo Pandolfi discovered the genes underlying acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL). It was a sign of successes to come for the philosophy student turned medical doctor turned biomedical scientist. (See CV)

“Many scientists make big discoveries early in their career, but only a subset of those, such as Pier Paolo Pandolfi, continue to make a big impact throughout their entire career,” says Lewis Cantley, chief of signal transduction at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Pandolfi admits that he was lucky early on, enjoying successes that reaffirmed his commitment to scientific investigation. Losing both parents to cancer only deepened his already unrelenting drive.

Luck, however, doesn't explain the success he's continued to have over the past two decades. Lured to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City before his dissertation was complete, Pandolfi continued to excel. He developed mouse models to highlight the importance of genes causing APL, then broadened his focus to study tumour suppressor genes.

Cantley suggests that Pandolfi's publication record of the past 15 years is unsurpassed by any other cancer genetics lab. His top papers have received hundreds of citations.

“What I adore, and what drives my career, is the desire to discover and understand the mechanisms and faulty genes underlying cancer — and then push to cure it,” says Pandolfi.

Although Pandolfi calls his time at Sloan-Kettering an incredible learning phase, he will move on this summer. His new role will be director of the cancer genetics programme at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital.

Cantley says that Pandolfi's boundless energy will make him an important part of expanded efforts at Beth Israel to translate basic research into individualized treatments for patients.

Pandolfi hopes to find new targets for therapy by genotyping and phenotyping the cancer of all patients who come through the research hospital, while conducting preclinical work on mice that could lead to clinical trials.

He says his career has been a dream. Even if he hadn't met with early success, he's convinced that his zeal would have led to a fruitful career path. “If you like it and have talent,” says Pandolfi, “slowly but surely you will prevail.”