2 Billion years of shelterin and t-loops: from telomere protection to tumor suppression

Dr. Titia de Lange received training in molecular biology and biochemistry at the University of Amsterdam. As an undergraduate, she did research in Richard Flavell’s lab at the MRC in Mill Hill, UK. She was a graduate student in Piet Borst’s lab in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Amsterdam and moved with Borst to the Dutch Cancer Center where she first developed an interest in telomeres. After receiving her PhD in 1985, de Lange joined Harold Varmus at UCSF for postdoctoral studies. With Varmus, she isolated human telomeric DNA and was the first to show that human telomeres shorten during tumorigenesis. In 1990, she moved to the Rockefeller to take a position as a University Fellow and was appointed as Assistant Professor in 1991. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1994 and to Professor in 1997. She currently is the Leon Hess Professor and the Director of the Anderson Center for Cancer Research at the Rockefeller University.

She is a member of EMBO, the US National Academy of Science, both Dutch Royal Academies, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the US National Academy of Medicine. She is an foreign member of the Royal Society of London and received honorary degrees from the University of Utrecht, the University of Chicago, and the University of Groningen.

De Lange’s awards include the inaugural Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research in 2001, the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center Prize, the Judd award from MSKCC, the AACR’s Charlotte Friend and G.H.A. Clowes Awards, the 2011 Vilcek Prize, the 2012 Vanderbilt Prize, the 2012 Dr. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2013, the 2014 Canada Gairdner International Award, the 2018 Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award, and the 2024 Pezcoller AACR International Award.