Prof. Alexander A. Shtil is Head of the Laboratory of Tumour Cell Death at Blokhin Cancer Center, Moscow, Russia. He received his MD degree at the Orenburg State Medical Institute and his PhD from the Moscow Research Institute of Otorhinolaryngology. From 1994 to 2002, he worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, investigating the mechanisms of multidrug resistance and drug response in cancer. He then established a new tumour cell death laboratory at the Blokhin Cancer Center with broad interests in cancer biology. The lab studies the molecular mechanisms of cytotoxicity of small molecule compounds as potential anticancer drugs. He organised tumour biology laboratories at the Institute of Gene Biology, Moscow State University, National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, and ITMO University at Saint Petersburg. In 2018-2020 Prof. Shtil was Group Leader in the megagrant ‘CDK8-mediated transcriptional reprogramming: interface of biology and medicine’ with I. Roninson (USA) as principal investigator. Prof. Shtil has authored more than 230 experimental and review articles as well as a number of patents. He is member of the editorial boards of four international scientific journals.