Dr. Justin Stebbing is the Chairman of Zephyr AI’s Scientific and Medical Advisory Board. Justin is Editor of Nature’s cancer journal Oncogene and a Professor of Biomedical Sciences at ARU in Cambridge. He specializes in a range of solid malignancies (breast, GI, lung, others) including difficult cases with few conventional options and has published over 700 papers, the majority regarding new therapeutic and translational approaches including use of immunotherapies in clinical trials, including a large number as 1st/senior author in high impact factor journals. He was previously a student at Trinity College, Oxford, receiving a 1st class degree, prior to a residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore prior to a PhD in London, investigating the interplay between the immune system and cancer-causing viruses.

Many of his papers involve deciphering gene regulatory networks in normal tissues, cancer cells and stem cells including the roles of regulatory RNA molecules (Justin’s laboratory discovered a new class of RNA termed ‘two-tailed mirtrons’). He has also described a new kinase for the first time, now a target in a drug discovery program, and been principle investigator in a large number of clinical studies at all stages of drug development, from novel molecules to biosimilars. These efforts aim to translate basic research into clinically useful findings to help patients at the bedside.

Most recently, his early work during the COVID-19 pandemic used artificial intelligence to identify a drug as having surprising anti-viral and anti-cytokine effects, data that led to Baricitinib’s FDA emergency approval as a once/day tablet in November 2020, as described in a book ‘Witness to Covid’. It has the highest mortality benefit of all drugs for hospitalised patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia, and its simplicity lends itself for use in low- and middle-income countries. He has worked with a number of funds including Calypso, Atticus Capital, Lansdowne, and Vitruvian Partners, and he sits on the scientific advisory boards of a number of companies with innovative, transformational approaches to cancer, was elected a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and was previously appointed the UK’s first NIHR Translational Professor of Oncology. His emphasis is on increasing the cure rate and improving quality and quantity of life, and using a computer-to-bench-to-bedside-to-regulatory approval based approach which Zephyr’s technology is ideally suited to.