Tony S. K. Mok

Tony S. K. Mok, MD, FRCPC, FRCP is the Li Shu Fan Medical Foundation Named Professor and Chairman of the Department of Clinical Oncology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is one of the most influential oncologists in Asia and globally, best known for designing and leading the IPASS trial — arguably the single most important study in the history of EGFR-targeted therapy. IPASS (Iressa Pan-Asia Study), published in 2009 in the New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrated in a landmark randomized comparison that gefitinib was superior to carboplatin-paclitaxel as first-line therapy in selected Asian patients with advanced NSCLC, and crucially, the embedded biomarker analysis revealed that this benefit was entirely confined to patients with EGFR mutations — fundamentally establishing EGFR mutation as the predictive biomarker for EGFR-targeted therapy. This paradigm-shifting trial catalyzed the molecular stratification era in lung oncology. Dr. Mok has subsequently led multiple major Asia-Pacific trials in EGFR-mutant NSCLC including NEJ002, WJTOG3405, and later osimertinib studies; he is also a major contributor to understanding the unique epidemiology and biology of lung cancer in never-smokers in East Asia. He serves on the IASLC Board and has received numerous international honors for his contributions to oncology.