Winner of 2010 European Magnetic Resonance Award

Dr John Griffiths, a Cancer Research UK-funded scientist, has received the 2010 European Magnetic Resonance Award for Basic Sciences.

Nominations for the award were put forward by a committee of more than 50 leading European scientists. The selection committee chose Dr Griffiths in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (a type of imaging technique) in cancer.

Dr Griffiths will receive his award at a special dinner on May 3rd 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden.

He said: "I am deeply honoured to receive this award, which has previously been given to many outstanding researchers.

"My work on the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging of cancer has been funded by Cancer Research UK (previously The Cancer Research Campaign) since 1982, so I feel that this is also an award to the charity itself."

The magnetic resonance phenomenon was first described in 1946 and has since formed the basis for increasingly sophisticated medical imaging techniques.

Dr Griffiths qualified in medicine from St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, before studying for his PhD at Oxford University.

He introduced the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy for monitoring cancers in 1981 and was awarded a research grant the following year from The Cancer Research Campaign, which later merged with Imperial Cancer Research Fund to form Cancer Research UK.

His research has been funded by the charity ever since and has resulted in a number of notable achievements so far, including the first magnetic resonance readings from a cancer in a patient in 1983, and the first use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy to detect an anti-cancer drug in a tumour in 1985. He has produced 274 research papers to date.

Dr Griffiths worked at St George's Hospital Medical School between 1979 and 2006, during which time he became Professor of Biochemistry as applied to Medicine, director of the Cancer Research UK Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Research Group and chairman of the Division of Basic Medical Sciences.

He is now a Senior Group Leader and co-director of imaging at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute, where he moved with his research group in 2006.

He was awarded an honorary chair at Cambridge University as Professor of Magnetic Resonance as Applied to Cancer in 2008 and also holds honorary clinical appointments at Addenbrooke's Hospital in the city.

Dr Griffiths is also editor-in-chief of the journal NMR in Biomedicine - which he founded in 1988 - and was secretary of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine for six years, receiving the society's Silver Medal in 2003.