Tyler Jacks is a David H. Koch Professor of Biology at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT), a long-time HHMI investigator, and founding director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, which brings together biologists and engineers to improve detection, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. Dr. Jacks is a member of the board of directors of

Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is an American life science and clinical research company. It is a global supplier of analytical instruments, clinical development solutions, specialty diagnostics, laboratory, pharmaceutical and biotechnology s ...

and

Amgen Amgen Inc. (formerly Applied Molecular Genetics Inc.) is an American multinational biopharmaceutical Corporation, company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. As one of the world's largest independent biotechnology companies, Amgen has a ...

, two of the major biotechnology corporations in the world. He is the president of Break Through Cancer and a member of the coard of overseers, the larger of two governing boards of

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

Early life

Tyler Jacks graduated magna cum laude with highest honors in biology from

in 1983 and earned a PhD in

biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

from the

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It is part of the University of California system and is dedic ...

, in 1988 under the guidance of Nobel Laureate

Harold Varmus Harold Eliot Varmus (born December 18, 1939) is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center. He was ...

. He then went on to do

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

at MIT in the

Whitehead Institute Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research institute located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States that is dedicated to improving human health through basic biomedical research. It was founded as a fiscally indep ...

in the lab of Robert Weinberg.

Career

He was named an assistant professor at MIT in 1992 and associate professor with

tenure Tenure is a type of academic appointment that protects its holder from being fired or laid off except for cause, or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency or program discontinuation. Academic tenure originated in the United ...

in 1997. In 2000, he was promoted to full professor standing. He has taught the spring version o
introductory biology (7.013)
at MIT with Professor Hazel Sive and currently teaches The Hallmarks of Cancer (7.45) at MIT with Professor Matthew Vander Heiden. He served on the board of scientific advisors of the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

and is a past president of the

American Association for Cancer Research The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is the world's oldest and largest professional association related to cancer research. Based in Philadelphia, the AACR focuses on all aspects of cancer research, including Basic research, basic, ...

. He also sits on the board of directors at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. and Aveo Pharmaceuticals Inc. He is a member of the scientific advisory board at T2Biosystems, Inc. and at Epizyme, Inc. He was a founding co-

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, a ...

of the '' Annual Review of Cancer Biology'' in 2017, serving until 2021. He is the president of Break Through Cancer, a foundation dedicated to supporting multi-institutional teams of researchers focused on finding solutions to some of the most difficult to treat cancers.

Research

He has pioneered the use of gene-targeting technology in mice to study cancer-associated genes and to construct mouse models of many human cancer types. The Jacks lab studies the genetic events that lead to the development of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

. The lab focuses on using a series of

mouse A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus'' ...

strains carrying engineered

mutations In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mitosi ...

known to be involved in human cancer. Through loss-of-function and gain-of-function mutations in

tumor suppressor genes A tumor suppressor gene (TSG), or anti-oncogene, is a gene that regulates a cell during cell division and replication. If the cell grows uncontrollably, it will result in cancer. When a tumor suppressor gene is mutated, it results in a loss or re ...

as well as the K-ras

oncogene An oncogene is a gene that has the potential to cause cancer. In tumor cells, these genes are often mutated, or expressed at high levels.

, mouse models of many types of cancer have been constructed, including

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of ...

astrocytoma Astrocytoma is a type of brain tumor. Astrocytomas (also astrocytomata) originate from a specific kind of star-shaped glial cell in the cerebrum called an astrocyte. This type of tumor does not usually spread outside the brain and spinal cord, an ...

, endometrioid

ovarian cancer Ovarian cancer is a cancerous tumor of an ovary. It may originate from the ovary itself or more commonly from communicating nearby structures such as fallopian tubes or the inner lining of the abdomen. The ovary is made up of three different ...

colorectal cancer Colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, colon cancer, or rectal cancer, is the development of cancer from the Colon (anatomy), colon or rectum (parts of the large intestine). Signs and symptoms may include Lower gastrointestinal ...

sarcoma A sarcoma is a rare type of cancer that arises from cells of mesenchymal origin. Originating from mesenchymal cells means that sarcomas are cancers of connective tissues such as bone, cartilage, muscle, fat, or vascular tissues. Sarcom ...

retinoblastoma Retinoblastoma (Rb) is a rare form of cancer that rapidly develops from the immature cells of a retina, the light-detecting tissue of the eye. It is the most common primary malignant intraocular cancer in children, and 80% of retinoblastoma cas ...

, and tumors of the

peripheral nervous system The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is one of two components that make up the nervous system of Bilateria, bilateral animals, with the other part being the central nervous system (CNS). The PNS consists of nerves and ganglia, which lie outside t ...

Awards and recognitions

In 1997, he received the Rhoads Award from the American Association for Cancer Research. In 1998, he won the Amgen Award from the

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) is a learned society that was founded on December 26, 1906, at a meeting organized by John Jacob Abel (Johns Hopkins University). The roots of the society were in the American Ph ...

. He has also been named a Ludwig Research Scholar in Cancer Biology from

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

. In 2002, he won the Chestnut Hill Award for Excellence in Medical Research, and in 2005 he won the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research. He was elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 2009.MIT: NAS Members
/ref> In 2014, he was presented the Hope Funds for Cancer Research Award of Excellence for Basic Research.

References

Publications

*Kumar MS, Lu j, Mercer KL, Golub, TR and Jacks T. 2007. Impaired microRNA processing enhances cellular transformation and tumorigenesis. Nature Genetics, 39(5):673-677 *Shaw AT, Meissner A, Dowdle JA, Crowley D, Magendantz M, Ouyang C, Parisi T, Rajagopal J, Blank LJ, Bronson RT, Stone JR, Tuveson DA, Jaenisch, R, and Jacks, T. 2007. Sprouty-2 Regulates Oncogenic K-ras in Lung Development and Tumorigenesis. Genes & Development, 21(6):694-707. *McLaughlin ME, Kruger GM, Slocum KL, Crowley D, Michaud NA, Huang J, Magendantz M, and Jacks T. 2007. The Nf2 tumor suppressor regulates cell-cell adhesion during tissue fusion. PNAS,104(9):3261-3266. *Ventura, A, Kirsch DG, McLaughlin ME, Tuveson DA, Grimm J, Lintault L, Newman J, Reczek EE, Weissleder R and Jacks T. 2007. Restoration of p53 function leads to tumor regression in vivo. Nature, 445, 661-665 *Macpherson D, Conkrite K, Tam M, Mukai S, Mu D, and Jacks T. 2007. Murine bilateral retinoblastoma exhibiting rapid-onset, metastatic progression and N-myc gene amplification. EMBO J, 26, 784-794 * Carla F. Kim, Erica L Jackson, Amber E Woolfenden, Sharon Lawrence, Imran Babar, Sinae Vogel, Denise Crowley, Roderick T Bronson, Tyler Jacks 2005. Identification of bronchioalveolar stem cells in normal lung and lung cancer. Cell, 121(6):823-835. *Alejandro Sweet-Cordero, Sayan Mukherjee, Aravind Subramanian, Han You, Jeff Roix, Christine Ladd, Todd R. Golub, Tyler Jacks. 2005. An oncogenic Kras expression signature identified by cross-species gene expression analysis. Nature Genetics, 37 (1), 48-55 *Daniela M. Dinulescu, Tan A. Ince, Bradley J. Quade, Sarah A. Shafer, Denise Crowley, Tyler Jacks. 2005. Role of K-ras and Pten in the Development of Mouse Models of Endometriosis and Endometrioid Ovarian Cancer. Nature Medicine, 11 (1), 63–70. *Kenneth P. Olive, David A. Tuveson, Zachary C. Ruhe, Bob Yin, Nicholas A. Willis, Roderick T. Bronson, Denise Crowley, Tyler Jacks. 2004. Mutant p53 Gain-of-Function in Two Mouse Models of Li-Fraumeni Syndrome. Cell, 119 (6), 847–860. *Ventura A, Meissner A, Dillon CP, McManus M, Sharp PA, Van Parijs L, Jaenisch R, Jacks T. 2004. Cre-lox-regulated conditional RNA interference from transgenes. PNAS (101):10380-10385.

External links

Tyler Jacks' lab at MITKoch Institute for Cancer Research homepageVideo of Tyler Jacks: Fundamentals of Cancer Research: Introduction and Overview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacks, Tyler Living people Harvard University alumni University of California, San Francisco alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty 21st-century American biologists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Howard Hughes Medical Investigators Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Year of birth missing (living people) Annual Reviews (publisher) editors Members of the National Academy of Medicine Helen Hay Whitney Foundation fellows