Prof. dr. J.H.J. Jan Hoeijmakers

Jan Hoeijmakers is Prof. Molecular Genetics at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the mechanism and clinical impact of mammalian DNA repair. His team cloned half of the genes involved in nucleotide excision and transcription-coupled repair, enabling elucidation of the underlying molecular mechanisms, and generated the largest set of mouse repair mutants allowing insight into the etiology of human repair syndromes. He discovered that DNA damage and consequent transcription stress is a main cause of ageing and that dietary restriction dramatically delays accelerated aging in mouse repair mutants and corresponding human patients by reducing DNA damage. These findings have wide clinical implications for many aging-related diseases most strongly neurodegeneration, for reducing side effects of chemo- and radiotherapy, and ischemia reperfusion injury associated with surgery and organ transplantation. Jan Hoeijmakers heads research teams in the Erasmus Medical Center, the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in Utrecht and the CECAD in Cologne. For his scientific achievements Hoeijmakers has obtained many (inter)national awards and distinctions including the Spinoza award, Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine in Europe, the Josephine Nefkens Prize for cancer research, 2 subsequent ERC advanced grants, the Koningin Wilhelmina Research Prize of the Dutch Cancer Society, recently the Thon Award of the Olav Thon Stiftelsen, etc.