Alastair Thompson, BSc (Hons), MBChB, M.D., is the Co-Director of the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Cancer Center and Section Chief of Breast Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas. He is a practicing clinician-scientist with over 35 years' experience in multidisciplinary patient care and translational “bench to bedside” studies and innovative clinical trials in cancer.

In addition to his current work at Baylor, he has led a breast cancer laboratory program, provided leadership for a cancer center in the United Kingdom (UK), chaired the UK national breast cancer trials portfolio of 120 studies and engaged in a range of pivotal roles in key drug, radiation therapy and surgical trials involving the UK, Europe, the United States and Australia. He has specialized in improving treatment for breast cancer patients with innovative localization techniques for breast conservation and axillary node surgery, and to minimize patient impact through skin-sparing and nipple-sparing mastectomy with autologous reconstruction where required.

He has preclinical and practical experience in the design, implementation, monitoring, and reporting of early through to late phase drug and medical device trials. His recent pharmaceutical experience includes active leadership of international trials such as the SOLE, MA32, MINDACT, and KRISTINE trials. He has acted as the chair of several phase II and phase III data monitoring committees and trials steering groups. For radiotherapy, he co-authored the ASTRO ABPI consensus guidelines and has contributed to the intraoperative and hypofractionation trials. Since transitioning to the US, national leadership roles include co-chairing the Comparison of Operative to Monitoring and Endocrine Therapy (COMET) Trial for low-risk DCIS, co-chairing the NCI-BCSC proposed “no surgery” clinical trial planning committee, and membership of the NCI BOLD taskforce and leadership positions within TBCRC (Loco-regional Subgroup Co-Chair) and SWOG (Translational Medicine Breast Group Chair). He is also an active member of ASCO and AACR.

With successful peer-reviewed funding from the US government and international charitable sources linking laboratory to clinical studies, Dr. Thompson has supervised over 24 postgraduate students and over 350 peer-reviewed publications in the highest impact factor clinical and scientific journals, improving care of those with cancer.