Biography

Nicola Aceto is Full Professor of Molecular Oncology at the ETH Zurich. Prior to joining ETH, he has been Swiss National Science Foundation Assistant Professor of Oncology at the University of Basel. The Aceto lab contributed to key discoveries in the metastasis field, including investigations of the biology and vulnerabilities of circulating tumor cells and their clusters, some of which already translated into clinical trials for patients with metastatic breast cancer. Nicola completed his training at the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) in Basel, Switzerland, at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School, and at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Boston, USA. To date, Nicola received three ERC Grants (StG 2015, PoC 2018, CoG 2020) and numerous awards related to his work on circulating tumor cells, including the Swiss Science Prize Latsis for Groundbreaking Cancer Research, the EACR Translational Cancer Research Award, the Robert Wenner Award from the Swiss Cancer League and the Friedrich Miescher Award for Outstanding Achievements in Biochemistry. He is an inventor in several patent applications related to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, advisor for several companies with an interest in liquid biopsy, and co-founder of an ETH Spinoff biotech company dedicated to the development of new cancer medicines.