Nick Coleman, who is Professor of Molecular Pathology at Cambridge, has won a number of prestigious prizes for outstanding clinical and translational research in both paediatric and cervical pathology. He has contributed very significantly to the translational development of minichromosome maintenance proteins, MCMs, for detecting malignant and pre-malignant cells. His work has shown that MCMs improve sensitivity of cervical smears and have further applications in early detection of lung and colorectal cancer. His recent work has pioneered the importance of altered microRNA profiles in both paediatric and cervical oncology which has led to a new blood test for diagnosing paediatric germ cell tumours.