Professor Philippa Darbre is Professor Emeritus in Oncology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading in the UK. She is an academic scientist who has been carrying out research into estrogen action in breast cancer for over 40 years and has been investigating the role of estrogen-mimicking chemicals since before the term "endocrine disruption" came into being in the early 1990s. She trained as a biochemist and holds the degrees of BScHons from the University of Birmingham, UK (1973) and PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK (1977). Her postdoctoral research began at the Molecular Medicine Institute at the University of Oxford where she held the first Nuffield Medical Research Fellowship of the University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellowship at St Hugh's College. In 1981, she moved to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratories in central London (now Cancer Research UK) where she became Head of the Cellular Endocrinology Laboratory. In 1991, she moved to the University of Reading and retired to Emeritus status in 2017. From retirement, she continues research into the role of endocrine disrupting chemicals in breast cancer together with some teaching of undergraduates in endocrinology and cancer. She continues to serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Toxicology, is patron of the charity "Canceractive" and is a member of the science panel of the charity, BreastCancer UK.

She has written two books on molecular biology methods, has guest-edited a previous journal volume on endocrine disrupters, has published 150 peer-reviewed research papers, and served as founding editor of the first edition of the book, Endocrine Disruption and Human Health.