Carla Martins

Carla Martins is a Principal Scientist and RAS Programme Biology Lead in Early Oncology R&D at AstraZeneca. Dr. Martins has over 25 years of cancer research experience spanning both academia and industry, and a long-standing commitment to improving the targeting of KRAS-driven cancers. She has authored multiple publications in this field in leading international journals.

Dr. Martins completed her Ph.D. at The Netherlands Cancer Institute and her postdoctoral training at UCSF, before becoming an associate scientist at the CRUK Cambridge Institute. Her early career focused on pre-clinical in vivo modelling of MYC, p53, and KRAS-targeted therapies. In 2011, she established her own laboratory at the University of Cambridge’s MRC Cancer Unit, which focused on the identification of therapeutic vulnerabilities in mutant KRAS and mutant p53 lung cancers in vivo. Her lab was instrumental in demonstrating how mutant KRAS dosage affects disease progression, cancer metabolism and response to therapy.

Since joining AstraZeneca in 2018, Dr. Martins has made significant contributions to small-molecule cancer drug discovery and the development of new RAS targeting strategies. She is also committed to developing more predictive and innovative pre-clinical cancer models.