Carl-Henrik Heldin is a cancer researcher interested in the elucidation of signalling pathways regulating cell proliferation, migration and survival, and how these pathways are perturbed in cancer cells. He is Chairman of the board of the Nobel Foundation.

Since 1992, Heldin has been professor in Molecular Cell Biology at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology at Uppsala University. Between 1986 and 2017 he was the Director of the Uppsala Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. He obtained a PhD degree in Medical and Physiological Chemistry in 1980 from the University of Uppsala, where he continued to work until 1985 using a position sponsored by the Swedish Cancer Society.

He has published more than 440 research articles and 210 reviews, and has received several scientific awards, including Prix Antoine Lacassagne (1989), K. Fernströms Large Medical Prize (1993), the Pezcoller-American Association for Cancer Research Award (2002) and Anders Jahre´s Large Medical Prize (2019).