Justin Stebbing

Justin Stebbing is a British clinician-scientist specialising in oncology and cancer research. He is a professor of biomedical sciences at Anglia Ruskin University and practices with the private sector Phoenix Hospital Group in London.

Stebbing is co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Oncogene. He is also a visiting professor of cancer medicine and oncology at Imperial College London.

Early life and education Stebbing graduated from Trinity College, Oxford. After completion of junior doctor positions in Oxford, he trained on the residency programme at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in the US, returning to London to continue his career at The Royal Marsden and then St Bartholomew's Hospitals. His PhD research investigated the interplay between the immune system and cancer including the role of viruses. In 2007, he was appointed a senior lecturer, and then in 2009 a full professor, at Imperial College London. In 2011, the National Institute for Health and Care Research awarded Stebbing its first Translational Professorship in Oncology, working on overcoming treatment resistance and targeted precision medicine approaches.

Research career Stebbing has published over 700 peer-reviewed papers and has an h-index of 90 according to Google Scholar.

Cancer research Stebbing was an oncology professor at Imperial College London and has gained a reputation for innovative treatments.

He is co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Oncogene.

The charity Action Against Cancer was set up to support Stebbing's work.

Stebbing's research in cancer has included work on the molecular biology of solid tumours. His group identified LMTK3 as an oncogene and therapeutic target in breast cancer. The team characterised the network of microRNAs induced by the estrogen receptor.

Stebbing has also worked on cancers caused by HIV and AIDS, including investigating immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome in patients with Kaposi's Sarcoma.

He has undertaken extensive work on biosimilars, cheaper versions of expensive biologic drugs designed to democratise access to these.

COVID-19 During the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Stebbing used artificial intelligence to identify baricitinib as a potential drug treatment. He led studies that showed that the drug reduced mortality in COVID-19 hospitalised patients with pneumonia, which led to the drug being authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration in October 2020 as an Emergency Use Authorization at first in combination with remdesivir, then alone. Stebbing wrote a book, Witness to COVID, 2020, describing its discovery, trials, studies and approval.

Stebbing is part of a team that ran a phase 1/2 clinical trial using invariant natural killer T cells as an 'off-the-shelf' therapy in ventilated patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the first time these cells have been used in the clinic.

Other research Stebbing has worked on neurological therapies for patients with unmet medical needs who are treatment resistant or unresponsive to other existing medications.

Clinical practice Stebbing is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and the Royal College of Pathologists. Misconduct case In 2020, Stebbing was investigated by the General Medical Council over allegations that he failed to provide adequate care to eleven patients he had cared for between 2014 and 2017. The case focused on whether Stebbing had prescribed inappropriate courses of treatment in patients whose cancers were too advanced to benefit from the treatment.

After initially denying all complaints against him, Stebbing eventually admitted 30 of the 36 charges, with the disciplinary panel finding he had "breached the very core of the Hippocratic oath." He is senior oncology advisor to Clinical ink, chairs the ZephyrAI scientific advisory board, and is chair of the boards of Etira and Portage Biotech. He is senior VP of clinical strategy and innovation at Graviton Biosciences focusing on new treatments for fibrosis, inflammation and metabolism based on selective targeting of ROCK2.