Hans Clevers | |
---|---|
Born | Johannes Carolus Clevers [1] 27 March 1957 [2] [3] [4] |
Nationality | Dutch |
Alma mater | Utrecht University |
Known for | Organoid generation and application |
Spouse | Eefke Petersen [5] |
Children | 2 [2] |
Awards | Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Dr A. H. Heineken Prize for Medicine Körber European Science Prize |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Molecular genetics Cell biology |
Institutions | Roche Princess Máxima Center University Medical Center Utrecht Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research Utrecht University Dana–Farber Cancer Institute |
Thesis | Early events in lymphocyte activation (1985) |
Doctoral advisor | Rudy Ballieux [6] |
Johannes (Hans) Carolus Clevers (born 27 March 1957) [2] [3] is a Dutch molecular geneticist, cell biologist and stem cell researcher. He became the Head of Pharma, Research and Early Development, and a member of the Corporate Executive Committee, of the Swiss healthcare company Roche in 2022. [7] [8] Previously, he headed a research group at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research [9] and at the Princess Máxima Center ; [10] he remained as an advisor and guest scientist or visiting researcher to both groups. [7] He is also a Professor in Molecular Genetics at Utrecht University. [8]
Hans Clevers was born in Eindhoven, the Netherlands in 1957. [4] He began studying biology at Utrecht University in 1975, but also started taking medicine in 1978, [7] in part due to his interest and in part because his friends and brothers were in the medical profession. [11] He spent 1 year in Nairobi, Kenya, and half a year at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, United States, for biology rotations. [11] [12] He received a Doctoraal (equivalent to an MSc) in Biology in 1982 and an Artsexamen (equivalent to an MD) in 1984. Mostly because of his research background, Clevers was selected for a training position in paediatrics, and then went to pursue a PhD in 1985, under the supervision of Rudy Ballieux. [6] [13] [14] He obtained his PhD 1 year later. [7] [11]
After his PhD, Clevers went to the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute as a postdoctoral researcher at Cox Terhorst's group. [8] [11] [15] [16] In 1989, he returned to the Netherlands, joining his alma mater , Utrecht University, as an assistant professor at the Department of Clinical Immunology. [8]
In 1991, Clevers became a professor and the chair of the Department of Immunology at Utrecht University. [8] He moved to the University Medical Center Utrecht in 2002 as a professor in molecular genetics, and started his lab at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research (Hubrecht Institute). [7] At the same time, he took up the position of Director of the Hubrecht Institute. [8]
In March 2012, Clevers was elected the president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, succeeding Robbert Dijkgraaf. [17] [18] His term concluded in 2015, and he started another lab at the Princess Máxima Center , [8] focusing on childhood cancer, [10] and became the Director Research and Chief Scientific Officer there until 2019. [8]
Clevers left University Medical Center Utrecht and was appointed Professor in Molecular Genetics at Utrecht University in 2020. [7]
In 2022, Clevers joined the Swiss healthcare company Roche as its Head of Pharma, Research and Early Development and a member of its Corporate Executive Committee. [19] [20] He remains an advisor and guest scientist or visiting researcher to his research groups at the Princess Máxima Center and Hubrecht Institute. [9] [10]
Since 2017, Clevers is an investigator at the Oncode Institute in Utrecht. [7] [21]
Clevers has served at a number of scientific organizations, including on the board of directors of the American Association for Cancer Research (2013-2016), [22] and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (2005-2015), [8] the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna (2015-2021) [23] and the Francis Crick Institute in London. [24] He is currently on the advisory board of various scientific journals, including The EMBO Journal , [25] Disease Models & Mechanisms , [26] Cell , [27] Cell Stem Cell [28] and EMBO Molecular Medicine . [29] From 2014 to 2022, he was also on the editorial committee of the Annual Review of Cancer Biology . [7]
Outside the academia, Clevers has been a scientific advisor to numerous biotechnology companies. [7] He also co-founded California-based Surrozen [30] in 2016 [31] and Shanghai-based D1 Medical Technology [32] in 2019. [33]
Clevers's early career focused on the Wnt signaling pathway. [34] His group identified the TCF1 protein, a member of the TCF gene family and a crucial downstream component of the Wnt signaling pathway, making it central in immune responses, embryonic development and tissue repair. [35] His interest in the gastrointestinal tract began with the discovery that another TCF family member, the TCF4 protein, is required in forming intestinal crypts. [36] Collaborating with Bert Vogelstein, he found that in colon cancer where the APC gene is doubly mutated, TCF family members activate catenin beta-1, which then enhances the expression of many genes that cause cancer transformation, [37] connecting the Wnt signaling pathway with colon cancer.
In 2007, Clevers's group identified a marker for stem cells of the small and large intestines, LGR5, itself also a target of the Wnt signaling pathway. [38] This led to his finding that LGR5 is a stem cell marker in other organs as well, including the stomach [39] and hair follicles. [40]
Building on this discovery, in 2009, his group published a landmark paper, describing for the first time how organoids, which are 3-dimensional in vitro structures that behave anatomically and molecularly like the organ from which they are derived, were generated from adult stem cells, creating organoids of the small intestine. [41] Clevers's group has applied this technology to culturing organoids from other organs, such as the stomach [39] and liver, [42] as well as from various cancer types, including cancer of the breast [43] and the ovaries. [44] This platform has since been applied in personalized medicine, by generating organoids from specific patients to screen for drugs. [45] [46] This is not limited to cancer but is applicable to other diseases as well (for example, cystic fibrosis). [47] His current major research interest is in using organoids derived from adult stem cells to study the molecular mechanism of tissue and cancer development.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Clevers's group modelled the infection of SARS-CoV-2 using lung organoids. [48]
An organoid is a miniaturised and simplified version of an organ produced in vitro in three dimensions that mimics the key functional, structural, and biological complexity of that organ. It is derived from one or a few cells from a tissue, embryonic stem cells, or induced pluripotent stem cells, which can self-organize in three-dimensional culture owing to their self-renewal and differentiation capacities. The technique for growing organoids has rapidly improved since the early 2010s, and The Scientist named it one of the biggest scientific advancements of 2013. Scientists and engineers use organoids to study development and disease in the laboratory, for drug discovery and development in industry, personalized diagnostics and medicine, gene and cell therapies, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine.
The Cancer Genome Project is part of the cancer, aging, and somatic mutation research based at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the United Kingdom. It aims to identify sequence variants/mutations critical in the development of human cancers. Like The Cancer Genome Atlas project within the United States, the Cancer Genome Project represents an effort in the War on Cancer to improve cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prevention through a better understanding of the molecular basis of the disease. The Cancer Genome Project was launched by Michael Stratton in 2000, and Peter Campbell is now the group leader of the project. The project works to combine knowledge of the human genome sequence with high throughput mutation detection techniques.
Transcription factor 7-like 2 , also known as TCF7L2 or TCF4, is a protein acting as a transcription factor that, in humans, is encoded by the TCF7L2 gene. The TCF7L2 gene is located on chromosome 10q25.2–q25.3, contains 19 exons. As a member of the TCF family, TCF7L2 can form a bipartite transcription factor and influence several biological pathways, including the Wnt signalling pathway.
Alexander van Oudenaarden is a Dutch biophysicist and systems biologist. He is a leading researcher in stem cell biology, specialising in single cell techniques. In 2012 he started as director of the Hubrecht Institute and was awarded three times an ERC Advanced Grant, in 2012, 2017, and 2022. He was awarded the Spinoza Prize in 2017.
The Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) is an independent biomedical research organisation founded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. The institute employs around 250 people from over 40 countries, who perform basic research. IMBA is located at the Vienna BioCenter (VBC) and shares facilities and scientific training programs with the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), the basic research center of Boehringer Ingelheim.
The TCF/LEF family is a group of genes that encode transcription factors which bind to DNA through a SOX-like high mobility group domain. They are involved in the Wnt signaling pathway, particularly during embryonic and stem-cell development, but also had been found to play a role in cancer and diabetes. TCF/LEF factors recruit the coactivator beta-catenin to enhancer elements of genes they target. They can also recruit members of the Groucho family of corepressors.
Siddhartha Mukherjee is an Indian-American physician, biologist, and author. He is best known for his 2010 book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, that won notable literary prizes including the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, and Guardian First Book Award, among others. The book was listed in the "All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books" by Time magazine in 2011. His 2016 book The Gene: An Intimate History made it to #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list, and was among The New York Times 100 best books of 2016, and a finalist for the Wellcome Trust Prize and the Royal Society Prize for Science Books.
Transcription factor 7-like 1, also known as TCF7L1, is a human gene.
Melissa Helen Little is an Australian scientist and academic, currently Theme Director of Cell Biology, heading up the Kidney Regeneration laboratory at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. She is also a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, and Program Leader of Stem Cells Australia. In January 2022, she became CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine reNEW, an international stem cell research center based at University of Copenhagen, and a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Australia, and Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands.
Owen Sansom, FRSE., FMedSci is the Director of the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute. He is known for his work determining the molecular hallmarks of colorectal cancer (CRC), including demonstrating the roles of the tumour suppressor protein APC and the WNT signalling pathway, as well as the involvement of intestinal stem cells in tumourigenesis
Peter J. Peters is a professor of nanobiology and a distinguished university professor at Maastricht University. Peters is best known for his work in electron microscopy (EM) and cellular immunology. He is the founder and director of the Institute of Nanoscopy.
Cédric Blanpain is a Belgian researcher in the field of stem cells. He is a tenured professor of developmental biology and genetics at Université Libre de Bruxelles and director of the stem cell and cancer lab at its Faculty of Medicine. He was one of the first researchers in the world to use cell lineage tracing in cancer research and he showed for the first time the existence of cancer stem cells in solid tumors in vivo. He was selected by Nature as one of 10 People who mattered most in 2012 and he received the outstanding young investigator award of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.
Vivian Li is a Hong Kong-born cell and developmental biologist working in cancer research at London's Francis Crick Institute. She has been researching how stem cells in the human bowel are programmed to ensure a healthy organ and what goes wrong when cancer develops. She is known for her work on the Wnt signalling pathway, discovering a new way that a molecule called Wnt is activated in bowel cancer. She won a Future Leaders in Cancer Research Prize in part for this discovery.
Jürgen Knoblich is a German molecular biologist. Since 2018, he is the interim Scientific Director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
Christine L. Mummery (1953) is an appointed professor of Developmental Biology at Leiden University and the head of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
Dannielle Engle is an American biologist and assistant professor of the regulatory biology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Engle's research aims at improving detection and treatment of pancreatic cancer.
Matthias Lutolf is a bio-engineer and a professor at EPFL where he leads the Laboratory of Stem Cell Bioengineering. He is specialised in biomaterials, and in combining stem cell biology and engineering to develop improved organoid models. In 2021, he became the scientific director for Roche's Institute for Translation Bioengineering in Basel.
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Meritxell Huch is a stem cell biologist and director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. Her research considers tissue regeneration and the development of tissue-specific disease models for human organs. She was awarded a European Research Council Consolidator Grant in 2023.
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