Dr Markus Borner is currently Associate Professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He qualified in 1982 at the University of Basel and completed his internship at the University Hospital in Basel. Following fellowships in haematology and oncology at the University Hospital in Basel and Bern, respectively, Dr Borner spent 3 years in the USA, where he was a guest researcher and later a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda. Dr Borner returned to Bern in 1994 and took up his present position in 1999.

Dr Borner is an active member of several academic societies including the American Society for Clinical Oncology, the European Society for Medical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer, New Drug Development Program.

Dr Borner was also a founding member of the Central European Society for Anticancer Drug Research and is chairman of various clinical trials in gastrointestinal and urogenital tumours. His laboratory research focus is the role of apoptosis regulation for developing new cancer treatments. His work has been published in several prestigious oncology journals, including Journal of Clinical Oncology, Oncogene, Annals of Oncology, Cancer Research, the British Journal of Cancer and the European Journal of Cancer.

Dr Borner is the author of the study that found that eight out of ten patients prefer oral chemotherapy.