Dr. John Blenis is the Anna Maria and Stephen Kellen Professor of Cancer Research and Professor of Pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. He also serves as Associate Director for Basic Science and Shared Resources at the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center and previously directed the Pharmacology Ph.D. Program.

Dr. Blenis earned his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Following postdoctoral research in the Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology at Harvard University, he joined Northwestern University Medical School as an assistant professor in 1987. In 1989, he joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where he remained until moving to Weill Cornell Medicine in 2014.

Dr. Blenis has made pioneering contributions to our understanding of signal transduction and metabolism. He discovered key components and regulatory mechanisms of the PI3K–mTOR–S6K and Ras–ERK/MAPK pathways—two of the most frequently altered signaling systems in cancer—and established a conceptual framework for understanding their organization and regulation. He has also investigated how altered signaling and metabolism contribute to cancer-associated cellular processes such as uncontrolled cell proliferation, migration/invasion, survival, and changed membrane and organelle trafficking, and has identified therapeutic targets and inhibitors that are now being evaluated in clinical studies.

 His recent work has focused on determining how metabolic disorders and conditions—including diet, obesity, and aging—contribute to cancer progression, metastasis, drug resistance, and escape from dormancy.