Allan Balmain

Allan Balmain FRS is Barbara Bass Bakar Distinguished Professor of Cancer Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Balmain was educated at the University of Glasgow where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1966, followed by a PhD on the organic chemistry of terpenoids in 1969.

Balmain was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2015. His certificate of election reads:

Allan Balmain has pioneered the use of the mouse as a model system for understanding the complexity of cancer at a genetic, molecular and cellular level. Through his novel and creative experiments he established the first molecular link between cancer initiation and carcinogen exposure, identified how specific genetic events lead to malignant progression and made major advances in our understanding of cancer susceptibility. Balmain’s wide-ranging, innovative use of mouse genetics has generated new approaches for visualizing the genetic architecture of cancer pathways and the roles of complex network interactions in determining an individual’s cancer susceptibility.

Balmain was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 1995.