(Robert) Charles Swanton FRS FMedSci FRCP is British physician scientist specialising in oncology and cancer research. Swanton is a senior group leader at London's Francis Crick Institute,^[3] Royal Society Napier Professor in Cancer^[4] and thoracic medical oncologist at University College London^[5] and University College London Hospitals,^[6][7] co-director of the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence, and Chief Clinician of Cancer Research UK.^[8][9]

Swanton completed was educated at St Paul's School, London^[1] and completed his PhD in 1999^[10] at what was then the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories (now the Francis Crick Institute) and his Cancer Research UK clinician scientist/medical oncology training in 2008.^[7]

Swanton combines his laboratory research with clinical duties as co-director of the CRUK Lung Cancer Centre, focussed on how tumours evolve over space and time.^[7] He has helped to define the branched evolutionary histories of solid tumours, processes that drive cancer cell-to-cell variation in the form of new cancer mutations or chromosomal instabilities, and the impact of such cancer diversity on effective immune surveillance and clinical outcome.^{[2][7][11][12]}

Swanton is a co-founder of Achilles Therapeutics^[13] with Sergio Quezada, Karl Peggs and Mark Lowdell. Achilles Therapeutics is a UCL/CRUK and Francis Crick Institute^[14] biotechnology company funded by Syncona^[15] that develops adoptive T cell therapies targeting clonal/truncal neo-antigens present in every tumour cell to limit drug resistance and tumour evolution.^{[citation needed]}

Swanton is the son of Robert Howard Swanton (MD, FRCP) a consultant cardiologist at UCL.^[23]