Johannes Carolus Clevers

Dr. Hans Carolus Clevers is Director and Professor of Molecular Genetics at the Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands. Clevers is one of the world’s leading researchers on stem cells and their potential for regenerative therapy. Over the past decade, his lab has produced vital studies on stem cells and the nature of self-renewal pathways controlling stem cells. Clever was the first researcher to demonstrate the existence of long-lived stem cells in many tissues, including the intestine, hair follicle, and stomach. Starting from the discovery that the TCF gene is the transcriptional endpoint of the WNT pathway, a pathway thatis implicated in stem cell control, Clevers demonstrated that one of the TCF genes is essential for the stem cell compartment in the intestine. His laboratory continued on to illustrate that the gene Lgr5 as a key marker of intestinal stem cells. Clevers has also contributed to colon cancer research, illustrating that cancer can initiate in normal stem cells in colon tissue through defects in the WNT pathway. More recently, his lab has demonstrated that intestinal stem cells can be expanded in cell culture. Under these conditions, cells form organoids in which stem cells are maintained by niche cells that descend from the stem cells themselves. Clevers’ work exemplifies how fundamental research can lead to the use of stem cells for transplantation therapy. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Dutch Spinoza Award, the Swiss Jeantet Prize, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Judd Award, the Israeli Shacknai Memorial Prize, the Dutch Nefkens Prize for Cancer Research, the German Meyenburg Cancer Research Award, the Dutch Cancer Society Award, the United European Gastroenterology Federation Research Prize, the German Ernst Jung-Preis für Medizin,  the French Léopold Griffuel Prize, and the Heineken Prize. He is also Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur and Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. In addition to his American Academy of Arts and Sciences foreign membership, he is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy or Arts and Sciences and a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. His numerous articles appear in prominent journals such as Cell and Nature.