Tyler Jacks

Area of research

Oncology · Molecular Biology

Research interest

Dr. Tyler Jacks is a world leader in the field of cancer genetics and is known for his ground-breaking work on the development of genetically-engineered mouse models of cancer (GEMMs). Over the course of his academic career, he has published over 200 peer- reviewed papers along with numerous review articles and book chapters. Dr. Jacks graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Biology in 1983 from Harvard College before becoming a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Harold Varmus at the University of California, San Francisco, where he showed that ribosomal frameshifting during translation gives rise to the gag-pol protein of the Rous sarcoma virus, HIV-1 virus and mouse mammary tumor virus. He went on to demonstrate that a stem-loop structure and RNA sequence making up the frameshift site are required for efficient frameshifting in vitro. In 1998, Dr. Jacks returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to join Dr. Robert Weinberg’s group as a post-doctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute, where he developed several GEMMs, including the Rb, p53 and Nf1 mice. In 1992, Dr. Jacks became an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Biology and a member of the MIT Center for Cancer Research, which became the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT in 2011. In 1994, he became an Assistant Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and was promoted to Investigator in 2002. In 2001, Dr. Jacks became Director of the MIT Center for Cancer Research, later the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and recently stepped down as Director after leading the Koch Institute for 20 years. He also resigned as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in order to take the role of President at Break Through Cancer. Currently, Dr. Jacks is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at MIT.