Trust Consultant Professor Charles Craddock has been awarded a CBE for services to medicine and medical research in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours.  

Prof Craddock is Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) and Professor of Haemato-oncology at the University of Birmingham. He is also Director of the Centre for Clinical Haematology at QEHB and was Transitional Director of the £24 million Birmingham Institute of Translational Medicine which opened on the hospital site in July 2015.

In 2003, Professor Craddock co-founded the blood cancer charity Cure Leukaemia, which has established a network of specialist research nurses.

Prof Craddock stated in 2014 that Cure Leukaemia can help find cures for all forms of blood cancer within the next 30 years. He has helped thousands of people suffering with blood cancer including former professional footballers Geoff Thomas and Stiliyan Petrov.

Dame Julie Moore, Chief Executive of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the QEHB, said: “I am delighted to hear that Prof Craddock’s life-saving work has been recognised in the New Year’s Honours. He is dedicated to his profession and thoroughly deserves this accolade for his commitment to improving people’s lives through medicine.”

Prof Craddock studied medicine at Oxford University and underwent postgraduate training in haematology at the Hammersmith Hospital, London, the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre at the University of Washington, Seattle.

In 1999 he was appointed Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Unit at the QE and in 2004 took up a newly created Chair of Haemato-oncology at the University of Birmingham.

In the past decade the BMT unit at University Hospitals Birmingham has grown rapidly to become the second largest adult transplant programme in the UK.

The Centre for Clinical Haematology houses an integrated clinical leukaemia and transplant programme and an early phase trial unit serving one of the largest catchment areas in Europe.