Jan Hoeijmakers

Professor Jan Hoeijmakers’ s (1951), as a Dutch molecular biologist, biochemist, and molecular geneticist, is an internationally respected and known scientist. Jan has a longstanding interest in understanding the molecular mechanisms of eukaryotic DNA repair and the clinical consequences of defects in repair pathways. He is known for elucidating the mechanisms of DNA repair and the effects of defects in the repair mechanism on genetic stability in aging, cancer, and various hereditary diseases.Jan's laboratory was also involved in the exact elucidation of the factors involved in the repair of DNA and their regulation, developed many (transgenic) aging mouse models and was able to observe DNA repair with fluorescence-marked proteins in the living organism. In doing so, they also found a strong direct link between DNA repair and various signs of aging. These findings have wide clinical implications for therapy of humans genome instability syndromes, dementia’s, treatment by chemo- and radiotherapy and ischemia-reperfusion injury associated with surgery and organ transplantation. His EMC research team pioneered DNA repair dynamics in living cells using novel imaging technologies, generated numerous mouse repair mutants, discovered a strong connection between accumulation of DNA damage and accelerated aging and a trade-off between cancer and aging. His research team holds several patents involving genome stability and its relation to aging. He was involved in the 2004 founding of the company DNage B.V. in order to evaluate possibilities for "important applications such as identification of biomarkers and compounds which are able to prevent or postpone many aging-related diseases, including cancer." (In 2006 the Dutch biotech company Pharming Group N.V. acquired DNAge B.V. His "laboratory also generated the first mouse mutants with intrinsic defects in the biological clock. This opened a new line of research in the department on the molecular mechanism and biological importance of circadian rhythmicity for onset and therapy of cancer and for lifespan and health in aging." He currently manages active research groups at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in the Netherlands, at the Global Faculty University of Cologne in Germany and at the Princess Máxima Center in the Netherlands.

For his work he received numerous awards and prizes including two advanced grants of the European Research Council, the Snoo van t’Hoogerhuys, the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine, the Spinoza Prize, the highest Dutch science award, the Van Gogh award from the NWO (i.e. Dutch Organization for Science), the Descartes-Huygens award for French-Dutch scientific collaborations, the Josephine Nefkens Prize for Cancer Research. The European Research Council awarded him an Advanced Grant. He received the Queen Wilhelmina Research Award from the Dutch Society for Cancer Research, the Charles Rodolphe Brupbacher Prize and the International Prize of the Olav Thon Foundation. He is the author or co-author of over 490 scientific publications. He serves and served on the editorial boards of five scientific journals.