Hans Clevers, M.D., Ph.D.

Hubrecht Institute

Dr. Clevers is a Professor of Molecular Genetics at Hubrecht Institute, Utrecht, The Netherlands. He also serves as Director of the Princess Maxima Center for Pediatric Oncology. Dr. Clevers received his M.D. degree in 1984 and his Ph.D. degree in 1985, both from the University of Utrecht. He completed his postdoctoral work (1986-1989) with Cox Terhorst at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University. Since 1991, Dr. Clevers has been a Professor at the University of Utrecht, first in Immunology until 2002, and currently in Molecular Genetics. From 2002 until 2012, Dr. Clevers served as the Director of the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht. From 2012-2015, he served as the President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Dr. Clevers work originally focused on T lymphocyte transcription factors, including the cloning of Tcf1 in 1991. With the discovery that Tcf factors are the final effectors of Wnt signaling, his interests shifted to the biology of Wnt signaling. He documented the Wnt pathway as the primary driver of adult stem cells and of colon cancer.  Subsequently, he identified a series of adult tissue stem cells with the novel Lgr5 marker and developed technologies for long-term culture of these stem cells as epithelial organoids, currently his major focus of research. Dr. Clevers has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2000, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2012 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States since 2014. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Swiss Louis Jeantet Prize in 2004, the Heineken Prize in 2012 and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2013. In addition, he is Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur since 2005 and Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion since 2012.