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Hans Clevers
Dutch molecular genetics and stem cell researcher From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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]
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Early life and education
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]
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Career
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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]
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Research
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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]
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Honours and awards
- Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (1999)[49]
- Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000)[50]
- Spinoza Prize (2001)[51]
- Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2004)[52]
- Knight of the Legion of Honour (2005)[7]
- Meyenburg Prize (2008)[53]
- Member of Academia Europaea (2009)[54]
- United European Gastroenterology Federation Research Prize (2010)[55]
- Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine (2011)[56]
- International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012)[1]
- William Beaumont Prize (2012)[57]
- Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine (2012)[58]
- Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion (2012)[59]
- Member of Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (2012)[60]
- Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2013)[61]
- International Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2014)[62]
- Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy[63]
- Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Sciences (2015)[64]
- Pour le Mérite (2016)[65][66]
- Körber European Science Prize (2016)[67]
- Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2018)[68]
- Foreign Member of the Royal Society (2019)[69]
- Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2019)[70]
- Keio Medical Science Prize (2019)[71]
- The Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research (2021)
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References
External links
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