Rene Bernards

Professor Dr René Bernards brings extensive experience in oncology as a researcher and entrepreneur. He received his PhD in 1984 from the University of Leiden. He performed his post-doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Robert Weinberg’s group at the Whitehead Institute. He joined Harvard University as an assistant professor in 1988 to study function of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes.

In 1992 he was appointed senior staff scientist at the Netherlands Cancer Institute where he studies mammalian cancer genetics.

In 1994 he was appointed part time professor of molecular carcinogenesis at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. His laboratory focuses on the development of new tools to perform genome-wide genetic screens to identify novel genes that act in cancer relevant pathways.

He was a co-founder of Prolifix in 1993 (currently TopoTarget) and co-founded Agendia in 2003, for which he also acts as scientific director.

He assists in the evaluation of investment opportunities.