Tyler Jacks

Tyler Jacks is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an HHMI investigator, and 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.

Tyler Jacks graduated magna cum laude with Highest Honors in biology from Harvard University in 1983 and earned a PhD in biochemistry from the University of California, San Francisco in 1988 under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus. He then went on to do postdoctoral research at MIT in the Whitehead Institute in the lab of Robert Weinberg.

He was named an Assistant Professor at MIT in 1992 and Associate Professor with tenure in 1997. In 2000, he was promoted to full Professor standing. He currently teaches the spring version of introductory biology (7.013) at MIT with Professor Hazel Sive.

He served on the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Cancer Institute and is a past president of the American Association of Cancer Research. 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 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. The lab focuses on using a series of mouse strains carrying engineered mutations known to be involved in human cancer. Through loss-of-function and gain-of-function mutations in tumor suppressor genes as well as the K-ras oncogene, mouse models of many types of cancer have been constructed, including pancreatic cancer, astrocytoma, endometrioid ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer, sarcoma, retinoblastoma, and tumors of the peripheral nervous system.

In 1997, he received the Rhoads Award from the American Association of Cancer Research. In 1998, he won the Amgen Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He has also been named a Ludwig Research Scholar in Cancer Biology from Johns Hopkins University. 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 Science in 2009. In 2014, he was presented the Hope Funds for Cancer Research Award of Excellence for Basic Research.

• 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.