Professor Karol Sikora is a leading cancer specialist in the UK.
He was born in Falkirk, Scotland to a local schoolteacher married to a Polish Army Officer who had joined the British Army in 1942. Brought up in Stafford and Wandsworth, he studied medicine at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he obtained a double first. His clinical training was at Middlesex Hospital where he earned distinctions in medicine, clinical pharmacology and obstetrics.
After junior doctor posts in London and Cambridge he began his career in cancer medicine as a registrar at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He became an MRC Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge where he completed a PhD supervised by Nobel Laureate, Sydney Brenner. He then spent two years as a Clinical Fellow in cancer medicine at Stanford University Hospital, California before returning to direct the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at Cambridge.
In 1986, he was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Medicine at Hammersmith Hospital, London which subsequently became part of Imperial College School of Medicine. He created a unique translational cancer research laboratory there exploring the molecular basis of cancer in a clinical setting. He was responsible for the building of a £8m cancer centre funded through his charity Help Hammer Cancer. In 1997 he managed the fusion of three cancer services in West London at Hammersmith, Charing Cross and St Mary’s Hospitals. Subsequently, he was seconded to be Director of the World Health Organisation Cancer Programme in Geneva and Lyon from 1999-2000 assisting the development of cancer strategy in low and middle income countries around the world.
He then became adviser on cancer to HCA (Hospital Corporation of America) hospitals internationally working from London and Nashville, USA. He subsequently created Cancer Partners UK – Britain’s largest independent cancer network of ten centres funded by private equity with significant numbers of NHS patients under contract. This introduced advanced radiotherapy technology at a time when the NHS was struggling. This organisation was subsequently integrated into Genesis Care International to create a global cancer network.
In 2015, he created and became medical director of Rutherford Cancer Centres which built four cancer centres with proton beam capability. He also was the joint founder of cancer centres in Nassau, Bahamas; Providenciales, Turks and Caicos; and St Johns, Antigua. He is currently senior medical advisor to the Gulf International Cancer Centre, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain Oncology Centre, Bahrain.
He was the creator and Founding Dean and Professor of Medicine at Britain’s first independent Medical School at the University of Buckingham. The school opened in 2015 with 67 students and now has a yearly intake of over 200, using local hospitals for their clinical training. A second campus has opened in Crewe to meet demand. Until recently he was a member of the NHS Trust Board of Buckinghamshire Hospitals for 3 years and chaired the Partnership of East London Cooperatives (PELC) which includes NHS 111, urgent care and out of hours GP services for a large part of East London.
He has been openly critical of the overall management of Britain’s NHS. He believes we are simply not getting value for money in our healthcare system because of gross inefficiency, appalling mis-management at the top and a total lack of customer focus. The technology available and the skills and quality of the staff excel on a global stage but access to services by patients across all socio-economic groups is currently disgraceful.
He has published over 500 papers and written or edited 20 books including Treatment of Cancer - a standard British postgraduate textbook, now coming to its eighth edition in over 35 years. His controversial book, Cancer: The key to getting the best care – making the system work for you was published in 2023 and is widely used by cancer patients and their families.
He was made a Life Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. During the Covid crisis he joined Twitter and now has over three hundred thousand followers and has been dubbed the Positive Professor. He has been critical of the way in which Covid policy impinged on patients with cancer and other diseases needing urgent care.
He is married with three children and six grandchildren. He enjoys long distance walking and old railways. Every Christmas he spends weekends as Father Christmas on a local heritage steam train at Princes Risborough.
