AREAS OF SPECIALTY:
Genome Instability
premature aging
mouse models
Jan H.J. Hoeijmakers PhD
Research of Jan Hoeijmakers focuses on DNA repair and the impact of nutrition on cancer and aging. His team made major contributions to cloning human repair genes, elucidating underlying mechanisms, and generating numerous mouse mutants mimicking rare human repair syndromes. He discovered that accumulating DNA damage causes transcription stress and aging but at the same time triggers a potent anti-aging ‘survival’ response, that resembles calorie restriction (CR). Applying 30% CR dramatically delayed accelerated aging in mouse repair mutants by reducing DNA damage and its sequelae, explaining the anti-aging, anti-cancer mechanism of CR. Translation to the first progeroid DNA repair patients even surpassed the enormous benefits in mice, revising nutritional guidelines for these syndromes. These clinical implications extend to counteracting neurodegeneration, side effects of chemo/radiotherapy, and surgery-related ischemia reperfusion injury. Currently, research on the underlying molecular mechanisms is combined with clinical trials on the effect of short-term fasting as nutritional preconditioning for (oncological) surgery and chemotherapy to improve quality of life of (ex)cancer patients. Jan Hoeijmakers heads research teams in the Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam), Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology (Utrecht), and CECAD (Cologne). For his scientific achievements he has obtained numerous (inter)national awards and distinctions.