Dr. Cordon-Cardo has outlined a broad vision that redefines the discipline of Pathology, placing it at the core of patient management and individualized medicine. An accomplished and internationally-recognized researcher, Dr. Cordon-Cardo is renowned for his studies on experimental pathology and molecular oncology. He developed and implemented an oncologic molecular pathology discipline and helped create the “systems pathology” platform. This approach uses systems biology to form mathematical models of the interaction and behavior of cancer cells with the goal of determining tumor pathogenesis and clinical outcome. Already his analyses of multi-drug resistance and alterations of tumor suppressor genes in human cancer, mainly those which deregulate cell cycle, have led to extraordinary breakthroughs in the way scientists understand and investigate the progression of certain solid-tumor cancers. His groundbreaking research has produced novel insights into tumor suppressor gene-oncogene interactions in human cancers, a proposed model for tumor progression of bladder cancer that defines two distinct pathways for early tumors, and evidence of the critical role of androgen receptor overexpression in the progression of prostate cancer and its resistance to hormonal therapy. Expression profiling using high through put microarrays has been a logical extension of the work carried out in his laboratory, providing novel insights into the molecular classification of human cancer. More recently, studies from his laboratory have linked adult stem cells and cancer, and have reported on the discovery of a subpopulation of human prostate tumor initiating cells with stem properties. This new cancer stem cell compartment has been identified in other solid tumors analyzed.