Catherine Alix-Panabieres

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Professor Catherine Alix-Panabières is an internationally renowned pioneer in the field of liquid biopsy and Professor of Medical Oncology at the University and University Hospital of Montpellier, France. She obtained her PhD in 1998 at the Institute of Virology, University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg, and joined Montpellier University Hospital in 1999 for her postdoctoral training, initiating a scientific and medical career entirely dedicated to innovation in cancer research. Since 2022, she has also been Visiting Professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Over the past 25 years, Professor Alix-Panabières has made major contributions to the development of liquid biopsy, particularly through the enrichment, detection, and functional characterization of viable circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in patients with solid tumors. She is internationally recognized as one of the leading experts in the EPISPOT technology, a pioneering approach developed to detect and characterize viable CTCs in breast, prostate, colorectal, head and neck cancers, as well as melanoma. This technology has recently evolved toward single-cell functional analysis of CTCs, opening new avenues for precision oncology.

Together with Professor Klaus Pantel, she introduced the term “liquid biopsy” for the first time in the international scientific literature in 2010 (Trends in Molecular Medicine), helping to establish and structure a rapidly expanding field that has become a cornerstone of modern oncology.

In 2010, Professor Alix-Panabières was appointed Associate Professor (MCU-PH) at the Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital of Montpellier, where she became Director of the Laboratory of Rare Human Circulating Cells and Liquid Biopsy (LCCRH), within the Department of Pathology and Onco-Biology. This internationally recognized platform combines complementary technologies to isolate, detect, and characterize rare circulating tumor cells. Today, as Professor of Medical Oncology (PU-PH), she leads a highly translational research program aimed at accelerating the clinical implementation of liquid biopsy.

Her research achievements include the first demonstration of PD-L1 expression on CTCs, preceding the major advances in cancer immunotherapy recognized by the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She also demonstrated the clinical utility of CTCs in breast cancer through the French STIC-METABREAST program and pioneered the establishment of permanent CTC-derived cell lines from breast and colorectal cancers, providing unique models to study metastatic progression and therapeutic vulnerabilities.

Professor Alix-Panabières has authored or co-authored more than 175 international peer-reviewed publications (h-index: 67; over 22,000 citations), contributed to 16 book chapters, and is inventor of three patents in the field of liquid biopsy. Her research has been supported by numerous national and European grants and is strengthened by extensive international collaborations across Europe, North America, and Asia.

She has organized and co-organized numerous international meetings dedicated to liquid biopsy, including five editions of the International Symposium on Minimal Residual Cancer (ISMRC), as well as scientific sessions at major international congresses such as the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO).

Her pioneering contributions have been recognized by numerous prestigious awards, including the Gallet and Breton Prize from the French National Academy of Medicine (2012), the AACR Award for the most cited scientific article of 2015 (2017), the International Society for Liquid Biopsy Lifetime Achievement Award (2021), the Alexandr Savchuk Award (2022), and the Béclère Prize from the French National Academy of Medicine (2024).

Through her scientific excellence, visionary leadership, and international influence, Professor Catherine Alix-Panabières has played a defining role in transforming liquid biopsy from an emerging concept into a clinically relevant technology shaping