Latest Developments in Cancer Research

CV of speaker:

Douglas Hanahan is an American biologist, professor and director of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). In 1983, he developed Super Optimal Broth, a microbiological growth medium. He also improved the protocols used for plasmid transformation of Escherichia coli. In the 1980s, he developed one of the first transgenic mouse models of cancer. He wrote a seminal paper The Hallmarks of Cancer, published in January 2000, and which is the most often cited article from the peer reviewed journal Cell. In 2011, an updated review article entitled "Hallmarks of cancer: the next generation" was published.

The Hanahan group at EPFL  investigates tumor development and progression using genetically engineered mouse models of cancer that recapitulate important characteristics of human cancers, with strategic goals to elucidate pathogenic mechanisms underlying multi-step tumorigenesis and malignant progression, and to develop new therapeutic strategies based on knowledge of mechanism for translation to clinical trials aiming to improve the treatment of human cancers. Currently the lab focuses on melanoma, glioblastoma, pancreatic cancer, and squamous carcinomas elicited by human papillomaviruses.

Professor Hanahan, received a bachelors degree in Physics from MIT and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard. Prior to joining the faculty of EFPL as head of Cancer Research, he was on the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics at UCSF in San Francisco and at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2007), the Institute of Medicine (USA) (2008), the US National Academy of Science (2009), and EMBO (2010).