Christopher C. Benz

Dr. Christopher Benz is a clinical oncologist and a translational researcher – a scientist who translates valuable findings from the laboratory into medical uses that benefit patients. He cares for patients with breast cancer at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is also a founding faculty member of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, where he conducts laboratory research on breast cancer.

Benz participates in major research efforts such as I-SPY 2, which is investigating an innovative first-step treatment for advanced breast cancer and is part of an endeavor to make new therapies available more quickly. For more than 30 years, translational research at Benz's lab has focused on identifying strategies at the molecular level to improve both diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Also, for more than a decade, Benz has co-directed one of the National Cancer Institute's centers for genome analysis, helping to complete its groundbreaking PanCancer Atlas project – which molecularly characterized more than 10,000 human tumors representing 33 types of cancer. This major undertaking is expected to help researchers develop more effective and personalized cancer therapies.

Benz earned his medical degree from the University of Michigan. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Vancouver General Hospital and a fellowship in oncology at Yale University.