Holger Hess-Stumpp studied biology at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany and received its Ph.D. from the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg, Germany. He worked as a molecular and cellular biologist at the German Cancer Research Center Heidelberg in the division of Cell Biology with Professor Werner W. Franke and is now almost 25 years with the Bayer AG. He has a long-term expertise in drug discovery, mainly for oncology targets. In this regard he was responsible as a lab head and later as a department head for in vivo experimental tumor models and many different topics such as chromatin modulation, cell cycle, anti-angiogenesis and tumor metabolism. Since a couple of years, he is responsible for large academic collaborations in the area of Oncology within the Open Innovation department. In the last few years, he acted also as chair of the so-called Strategic Governance Group Oncology within the IMI-2 program.