Gregory James Hannon One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 1964) is a professor of molecular cancer biology and director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute at the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge while also serving as a director of cancer genomics at the New York Genome Center and an

adjunct professor An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, however the genera ...

Career and research

Hannon is known for his contributions to

small RNA Small RNA (sRNA) are polymeric RNA molecules that are less than 200 nucleotides in length, and are usually non-coding Non-coding DNA (ncDNA) sequences are components of an organism's DNA that do not encode protein sequences. Some non-coding DNA ...

biology, cancer biology, and mammalian

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

. He has a history in discovery of oncogenes, beginning with work that led to the identification of CDK inhibitors and their links to cancer. More recently, his work has focused on small RNA biology, which led to an understanding of the biochemical mechanisms and biological functions of RNA interference (RNAi). He has developed widely used tools and strategies for manipulation of

gene expression Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, protein or non-coding RNA, and ultimately affect a phenotype, as the final effect. The ...

in mammalian cells and animals and has generated genome-wide

short hairpin RNA A short hairpin RNA or small hairpin RNA (shRNA/Hairpin Vector) is an artificial RNA molecule with a tight hairpin turn that can be used to silence target gene expression via RNA interference (RNAi). Expression of shRNA in cells is typically acco ...

(shRNA) libraries that are available to the cancer community and was among the first to demonstrate roles for microRNAs in cancer. His laboratory also discovered the piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway and linked this to transposon repression and the protection of germ cell genomes. His innovations include the development of selective re-sequencing strategies, broadly termed exome capture. In 2017, Hannon was awarded a £20 million Cancer Grand Challenges award to unite the IMAXT team - a team of researchers from Switzerland, Ireland, Canada, the USA and the UK, with far ranging expertise from cancer biology and pathology to astronomy and even VR video game design. The team's aim is to create an interactive 3D map of cancer, which could be explored in virtual reality. The programme could transform the way researchers study cancer by providing unprecedented insight into how individual cells are arranged and how they interact to allow the tumour to grow. In 2018, it was announced Prof Hannon would guide the Functional Genomics Centre, a collaboration between Cancer Research UK and AstraZeneca. The centre, housed inside the Milner Therapeutics Institute, aims to act as a hub for genetic screens, cancer models,

CRISPR CRISPR () (an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. These sequences are derived from DNA fragments of bacte ...

tool design, and computational approaches to

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

to understand genetic changes in cancer development and identify potential drug targets.

Awards and honours

Pew Scholar The Pew Charitable Trusts is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1948. With over 6 billion in assets, its stated mission is to serve the public interest by "improving public policy, informing the public, a ...

in the Biomedical Sciences, 1997 * Rita Allen Scholar, 2000 * US Army Breast Cancer Research Programme Innovator Award, 2002 * AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research, 2005 *

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, 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 Nati ...

Award in Molecular Biology, 2007 * Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research The Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research is awarded by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to recognize cancer researchers who are making significant contributions to the understanding of cancer or are improving the treatment of the disease t ...

, 2007 *

Member, 2012 * Royal Society Wolfson Professorship, 2015 * Academy of Medical Sciences member, 2017 *

EMBO Embo ( gd, Eurabol, IPA: �iaɾəpɔɫ̪ is a village in the Highland Council Area in Scotland and the former postal county of Sutherland, about north-northeast of Dornoch. On 16 July 1988, Embo declared itself independent from the rest of the ...

member, 2018 * The Royal Society Fellow, 2018 *European Academy of Cancer Sciences Fellow, 2019 *Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy, 2020

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hannon, Gregory James Living people Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Case Western Reserve University alumni Molecular biologists Howard Hughes Medical Investigators 1964 births