Candace S. Johnson

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 program 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. Her major responsibilities were to facilitate the seamless bench-to-bedside development and delivery of promising new cancer therapies involving various types of cancer.

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 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 therapeutic approaches to cancer using highly characterized tumor models; and mechanisms of vitamin D mediated antiproliferative effects either alone or in combination with other cytotoxic agents.

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. Since 2019, she has served on the NCI Frederick National Laboratory Advisory Committee and has chaired that committee since 2021.