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| Scientific Advisory Board |
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Dr. Stefan Beck,The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,
Cambridge, UK
Associate Prof. Susan Clark, Sydney Cancer Centre,
Sydney, Australia
Prof.Dr.med. Manfred Dietel, Charité,
Berlin, Germany
Dr. Jörg Hoheisel, German Cancer Research Center, DKFZ,
Heidelberg, Germany
Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Dr. Peter Jones, USC Norris Cancer Center,
Los Angeles, California
Dr. Peter Laird, USC Norris Cancer Center,
Los Angeles, California
Dr. Christoph Plass, The Ohio State University,
Athens, Ohio
Dr. Wolf Reik, The Babraham Institute,
Cambridge, UK
Scientific Consultants and Co-founders:
Dr. Ivo Gut
Head of Technology Development, Centre National de Génotypage, Paris, France
Expertise: mass spectometry
Prof. Jörn Walter
Head of Genetics Department, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany
Expertise: DNA methylation |
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Dr. Stephan Beck, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Stephan Beck received his MS (1982) and PhD (1985) from the University of Konstanz (Germany) where he specialised in physical chemistry studying DNA conformational changes. After postdoctoral fellowships in the Division of Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and Millipore Corporation in Bedford (USA), he moved to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London in 1990 to head the DNA Sequencing Laboratory. There, he continued to develop novel methodologies and software for the analysis of DNA which he applied to study the molecular function and evolution of the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), an essential part of the adaptive immune system. In 1996 he joined the Sanger Institute in Hinxton where he continued and expanded his research into genetic and epigenetic aspects of chromosome and genome function. In 1998, he became Head of Human Sequencing joining a team of senior scientists co-ordinating the production and finishing of the Sanger Institute\'s contribution towards the Human Genome Project.
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Dr. Susan Clark, Sydney Cancer Center
Dr. Susan Clark gained her PhD in biochemistry in 1982 at Adelaide University, Australia, after which she worked in the biotechnology industry for 10 years developing genetically engineered products such as animal vaccines and human pharmaceuticals. A decade ago she went back to basic research studying gene regulation, in particular the role of DNA methylation in development and in cancer. The lab\'s major breakthrough came with the development of a new technique (bisulphite sequencing) to analyse methylation patterns of individual cytosines. Dr Clark\'s major focus is now on the role of methylation during cancer. In collaboration with scientists from CSIRO, Dr Clark\'s groundbreaking research has led to the development of a simple DNA test to detect prostate cancer cells in blood.
Widely published in prestigious peer reviewed journals and international cancer conferences, Dr Clark is highly respected internationally in her field for her pioneering work on DNA methylation and its role in development and cancer.
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Prof. Dr. Manfred Dietel, Charité
Manfred Dietel received his diploma in medicine (1973) and was promoted to assistant professor (1980) from the University of Hamburg. In 1983 he became full professor of anatomical and surgical pathology. Until 1989, when he became Director of the Institute of Pathology of the University of Kiel, he was member of various special research groups and was named member of the \"Medizinausschuss des Wissenschaftsrats\" of Germany in 1990. After becoming Director of the Institute of Pathology, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Charité he was named Dean of the Medical Faculty Charité, Humboldt-University of Berlin in 1997. He has been Medical Director and Head of the Board of Directors of the Charité from 1999 on and was elected President of the 2001-Congress of the European Society of Pathology. He is member of the Editorial Board of the WHO-Series "Classification of Tumours".
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Dr. Jörg D. Hoheisel, DKFZ
Jörg D. Hoheisel was trained as a molecular biologist at the University of Constance, Germany. He received his diploma graduation and PhD degree at the Department of Physical Biochemistry and subsequently worked for five years at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London, UK, the initial two years being funded by a post-doctoral EMBO fellowship. He joined the Deutsche Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ, German Cancer Research Centre) in 1993 in Heidelberg, Germany where he is actually Head of Division (Functional Genome Analysis) .
His scientific interests center around the establishment and sensible use of high-throughput analysis techniques - with some emphasis on array-based assays - for the analysis and evaluation of the complex molecular interactions in living organisms.
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Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch is a founding Member of the Whitehead Institute and professor of biology at MIT, received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Munich in 1967. He came to the Whitehead from the University of Hamburg in Germany, where he was head of the Department of Tumor Virology at the Heinrich Pette Institute. Jaenisch is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology, and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1996, he was awarded the Boehringer Mannheim Molecular Bioanalytics Prize. He was named the first recipient of the Peter Gruber Foundation Award in Genetics in 2001 In 2003, he received the Charles Rodolphe Brupbacher Prize for basic research in oncology and was named to the National Academy of Sciences.
Rudolf Jaenisch has made important contributions to cloning technology and is one of the founders of transgenic science (gene transfer to create mouse models of human disease).
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Prof. Peter A. Jones, USC Norris Cancer Center
Peter A. Jones was born in South Africa, attended school in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and received his Doctor of Philosophy Degree from the University of London in 1973. He joined the University of Southern California in 1977, attaining the rank of Professor in 1985, and became Director of the Cancer Center in 1993. In 1983 he won the USC Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship. He is the author of more than 200 journal publications and book chapters, and he serves on several national and international committees, panels, and editorial boards. He has received a variety of honors, including the Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Cancer Institute, and in 1999 was named Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at USC. Dr Jones is known for his studies on the molecular biology of cancer and of basic mechanisms of DNA methylation and its role in cancer and differentiation.
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Dr. Peter Laird, USC Norris Cancer Center
Peter Laird was born in Massachusetts, USA, but at the age of nine, moved to The Netherlands. He earned his BS and his MS from the University of Leiden. After receiving his PhD in 1988 at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, he joined the laboratory of Dr Anton Berns to work on gene targeting in mice. He then moved to Boston to work with Dr Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute. During this second postdoctoral fellowship, he used a mouse model system to provide the first direct evidence for a causal role of DNA methylation in cancer, published in the journal Cell in 1995. In 1996, he was recruited as Assistant Professor to the University of Southern California. His work at USC has led to the invention of two new DNA methylation analysis techniques, COBRA, published in 1997, and MethyLight, published in 1999, and patented in 2001.
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Prof. Dr. Christoph Plass, The Ohio State University
Christoph Plass received his diploma in biology from Freie Universität Berlin in 1987. Until 1993 he worked in the Institute for Biology of the Medical University, Lübeck, Germany where he gained his PhD. He was a Postdoctoral Research Affiliate in the Laboratory of Dr. Verne Chapman at the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY from 1993 to 1996. From 1996 to 97 he returned to the Roswell Park Cancer Institute as a Cancer Research Scientist.
In 1997 he entered the Division of Human Cancer Genetics of the Ohio State University at Columbus, OH as Assistant Professor and became Associate Professor of the Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics in 2002.
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Dr. Wolf Reik, The Babraham Institute
Wolf Reik studied medicine at the universities of Freiburg and Hamburg and obtained his MD from the University of Hamburg. He did his thesis work with Rudolf Jaenisch, and postdoctoral work with Azim Surani in Cambridge. In 1987, he became a Fellow of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine at Cambridge. In 1992, he was named Head of the Laboratory of Developmental Genetics, and Head of the Developmental Genetics Programme at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge in 1997. His research interests are in mammalian epigenetics and imprinting. He is a member of scientific advisory boards of international academic institutions, and has won a number of honours and prizes, including the 1994 Wellcome Prize in Physiology.
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