Henrik Jørn Ditzel is Professor and Head of Research at Department of Cancer and Inflammation Research, Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Southern Denmark and Senior Consultant at the Department of Oncology, Odense University Hospital (OUH), Denmark. He is also an Adjunct Professor at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA and Director of the Bioimaging Center DAMBic at OUH/SDU.
Dr. Ditzel obtained his MD at the University of Odense in 1987. He received his PhD in Cancer immunology in 1992 and defended his medical doctorial thesis (DMSc) at University of Odense in 1999. He has spent 10 years at the prestigious U.S. research institution, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, where he held positions as Assistant and Associate Professor and headed several NIH grants. Concurrently with his research effort, Dr. Ditzel completed his clinical training in Clinical Immunology at University of California, Diego (UCSD) Medical Center and became board certified in Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ABHI) in 2001. He obtained his California State license in 2002 and served as Associate Clinical professor and Associate clinical Director at the Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics laboratory at UCSD Medical Center.
Since 2003 Dr. Ditzel is Professor of Cancer Biomedicine at University of Southern Denmark, where he heads a large translational cancer research group. His primary research interests include breast cancer, precision medicine, resistance to endocrine treatment, predictive and prognostic biomarker, cancer immunity, cancer stem cells, dissection of the metastasis process, cancer/testis antigens, and targeted therapies. In addition, his group studies the function of cancer testis antigens (CTAs) and EGFR-inhibitor resistance in non-small lung cancer (NSCLC). Clinical samples are studied using global analysis such as proteomics, transcriptomics and next-generation sequencing.
He has 130+ publications in journals such as Nature Immunology, Nature Clinical Practice in Oncology, Nature Communications, PNAS, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, JAMA Oncology, Journal of Experimental Medicine, and Cancer Research, and given 100+ international invited oral presentations.
Dr. Ditzel has been a member of NIH study sections and the American Arthritis Foundation Grant Review Board, the Biomedical panel of The Irish Science Foundation and he has reviewed grants from several public and private foundation in the US and Europe. More recently, Dr. Ditzel chaired the Danish Cancer Society Scientific committee (2013-15) and the Danish Cancer Research Foundation (2013-15).
Dr. Ditzel has received several awards and honors, including the Danish Society for Cancer Research Honorary prize in 2011, Knight of the Order of Dannebrog by Denmark's Queen Margrethe 2015, and he was elected member of American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2003.