Dr. Candace S. Johnson joined the faculty of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in February 2002, and is currently President & CEO, the M&T Bank Presidential Chair in Leadership and Professor of Oncology.
The first woman to lead Roswell Park, Dr. Johnson has steered the expansion of pivotal programs in areas like immunotherapy, cellular therapies, and community outreach and engagement. She has guided Roswell Park through a period marked by significant growth in both staff and patients served, attracting highly acclaimed physicians and scientists from around the world to Western New York.
Prior to her appointment as Roswell Park President & CEO in 2015, Dr. Johnson was Deputy Director of the Center and also Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics for more than a decade. From 1997-2002, Dr. Johnson served as Deputy Director of Basic Research at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and Professor of Pharmacology and Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Dr. Johnson earned her doctoral degree in Immunology from The Ohio State University, Columbus, in 1977. From 1977 to 1981, she completed research and postdoctoral fellowships in Immunology/Cell Biology at the Michigan Cancer Foundation, Detroit. Her research interests include translational research to facilitate the efficient application of promising laboratory findings in clinical studies; preclinical design and development of more effective cancer treatments; and exploring whether vitamin D can help to prevent or control cancer development.
Dr. Johnson is a member of the National Institutes of Health Reviewers Reserve and has served as a member of the National Cancer Institute Review Group Subcommittee A Cancer Center (Parent Committee) and of the Experimental Therapeutics Study Section for two terms. She also is a member of many professional and scientific societies, Senior Editor of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Associate Editor of Molecular and Cellular Differentiation, Oncology, and Molecular Pharmacology, and a member of the editorial board of Oncology Reports and Molecular Pharmacology. She has served on the NCI Frederick National Laboratory Advisory Committee (FNLAC) since 2019 and chaired that committee since 2021.
Dr. Johnson has authored or coauthored nearly 200 journal publications, book chapters and abstracts, and has been issued patents on the “Use of Pretreatment Chemicals to Enhance Efficacy of Cytotoxic Agents” and “Endothelial Specific Targeting.”
