Stephen Elledge

Dr. Stephen J. Elledge is the Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Elledge is best known for elucidating how eukaryotic cells sense and respond to DNA damage. Many clues to how cancer develops have come from probing the cell cycle—the predictable, yet complex series of steps that culminate with cell division. Research by Elledge has uncovered important clues about what drives the cell cycle and how cells sense and respond to DNA damage. He has identified key DNA damage response genes both in yeast and mammalian cells, showed how the damage-response pathway is activated by DNA lesions, and made key contributions to defining the cascade of events that enforces cell cycle arrest and controls DNA repair. Elledge's work is marked by the development of powerful research tools to uncover the network of genes involved in sensing and repairing DNA damage. His pioneering work laid the foundation for our current understanding of how failures in DNA damage sensing relate to the medically important field of genome instability. He has also contributed on a broad level to advances in scientific disciplines by developing new cloning methods, as well as building cDNA libraries, collections of DNA snippets that code for proteins. Among his many awards are the Michael E. Debakey Award for Research Excellence, the American Association of Cancer Research G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award, the inaugural Paul Marks Prize in Cancer Research, the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology, the John B. Carter, Jr. Technology Innovation Award, the Genetics Society of America Medal, the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the American Italian Cancer Foundation Prize for Scientific Excellence in Medicine, and the Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science. In addition to his American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership, he is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. His publications appear in Cell, Nature, and Science.