Professor Hans Clevers
Meet Hans, a co-investigator on OPTIMISTICC and SPECIFICANCER
Hans obtained his MD and PhD from Utrecht University, Holland. He has been a Professor in Molecular Genetics at Utrecht University since 1991. He runs his lab in the Hubrecht Institute. Throughout his career, he has worked on the role of Wnt signalling in stem cells and cancer.
His discoveries include TCF as Wnt effector, the role of Wnt in adult stem cell biology and of Wnt pathway mutations in colon cancer, Lgr5 as a marker of adult stem cells, and –finally- a method to grow ever-expanding mini-organs (‘organoids’) from Lgr5 stem cells derived from a range of healthy or diseased human tissues. This has led to over 700 publications and >120,000 citations. He is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Academie des Sciences (Paris) and Royal Society London. Recipient of multiple awards, including the Swiss Louis Jeantet Prize, the Heineken Prize, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.