Stephen J. Russell, MD, PhD is a world-renowned researcher in the field of gene and virus therapy.  He combines more than three decades of leadership as a clinician and researcher with extensive experience in all aspects of drug discovery and development. 

A board-certified hematologist, Dr. Russell is a co-founder of Vyriad, the Richard O. Jacobson Professor of Molecular Medicine at Mayo Clinic and immediate past President of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. 

Early in his career, Dr. Russell pioneered novel methods for engineering viral cancer immunotherapies.  He was a founder of Cambridge Genetics, a biotechnology company, and the European Society of Gene Therapy.  At the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Russell founded the Department of Molecular Medicine and built a comprehensive oncolytic virotherapy program.  He has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed research papers and is a frequent speaker at scientific and medical conferences. 

Dr. Russell graduated in medicine from Edinburgh University, Scotland, with distinctions in microbiology and surgery. He later earned his PhD at the University of London after researching the retroviral/parvoviral transfer of interleukin genes to cancer cells as a novel approach to immunotherapy, which led to a clinical gene therapy trial at Marsden Hospital, England. Dr. Russell held appointments at hospitals throughout England and Scotland before moving to the United States to join the Mayo Clinic.  

“Many genetically engineered viruses have been shown to destroy tumors in mice,” says Dr. Russell. “There is therefore no question that they will eventually prove to be useful in the treatment of human cancer. Our current challenge is to understand the barriers to success that are absent in tumor-bearing mice but present in cancer patients, and to devise new treatment strategies to address them.”