Professor Simon Ekman is a Senior Consultant, Professor of Oncology and Research Group Leader at the Karolinska University Hospital/Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

Professor Ekman received his MD from Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, and completed his training in medical oncology and radiotherapy at the Department of Oncology, Uppsala University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden. He obtained his PhD in Molecular Cell Biology in 2000 from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Uppsala University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Uppsala University between 2002 and 2004.

In 2011/2012, Professor Ekman was a visiting research fellow in the Hirsch Biomarker Analysis Laboratory for lung cancer research at the University of Colorado Denver, CO, USA, where his research was focused on resistance mechanisms in the treatment of lung cancer with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)–targeted therapy.

Professor Ekman’s research focuses on thoracic oncology, mainly lung cancer, and includes both clinical and preclinical studies. In addition to his national role of introducing novel treatments for lung cancer, he is focused on finding new treatment targets and biomarkers that are important for prognosis and treatment response in lung cancer patients, especially regarding tyrosine kinase inhibitors and immunotherapy. For this purpose, in collaboration with several other researchers, he has established large patient cohorts with detailed clinical data and associated tumour material for molecular analyses. He is also prospectively and longitudinally biobanking liquid biopsies, including blood samples during patient treatment and follow-up, with the aim of analysing predictive biomarkers for relapse and treatment response and resistance. As a clinician, he also has a great interest in clinical research including therapeutic studies, from phase I to phase III studies, as well as registry studies where Sweden's high-quality cancer registries are used. A strong and clear driving force in his research is conducting translational cancer research where results from preclinical research can quickly be translated into clinical use.

Professor Ekman has been Principal Investigator for numerous clinical phase I–III studies in thoracic oncology. He is a member of the Swedish National Board on Treatment of Lung Cancer and the Board for the Swedish National Lung Cancer Registry, as well as a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO). He has served as a member of the Communications and Membership Committees of IASLC and is a member of the ESMO Faculty and the ESMO Publications Working Group. Professor Ekman participates in developing the national guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer in Sweden and has participated in European treatment guidelines for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer from ESMO.