About the Editors

Editor-in-Chief

Jan Paul Medema, PhD, Amsterdam University Medical Centers and Oncode Institute, The Netherlands

Jan Paul Medema studied Chemistry in Leiden, the Netherlands, graduating in 1991 with a specialisation in biochemistry and medical biochemistry. He continued his training under the guidance of Professor Hans Bos at the Univeristy of Utrecht and received his PhD in 1996 on the topic of the oncoprotein p21Ras. He then went on to study the role of programmed cell death in tumor biology and immunology in order to understand the basic concepts of cell death signalling and the way these are perturbed in cancer. He unravelled several modes of cell death escape, specifically in the face of a cytotoxic immune response. Later, his work moved into the direction of cancer heterogeneity and its role in cell death resistance, tumor growth and therapy response, centering around the role of cancer stem cells in these processes, as well as the role of inter-patient heterogeneity in the aggressiveness of tumors. Currently, Professor Medema is the Head of the Laboratory of Experimental Oncology and Radiobiology (LEXOR) in the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam, which has developed several research lines focusing on the mechanisms of survival/cell death resistance of tumor cells against therapeutic interventions.

Associate Editors

Maarten F. Bijlsma, PhD, Amsterdam University Medical Center, The Netherlands

Maarten Bijlsma received his master’s degree in molecular biology from the University of Amsterdam in 2002. His PhD studies at the Medicine Faculty of that same university centered on the contributions and mechanisms of Hedgehog signaling in development, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. He received his doctorate in 2008 and then, supported by KWF Dutch Cancer Society fellowship, did his postdoctoral research in the lab of Henk Roelink at UC Berkeley. Here, he further investigated Hedgehog signaling in development and cancer, discovering several previously unrecognized paradigms and mechanisms in this signaling pathway.  Since 2010, he is a group leader at the Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, where his group works on pancreatic and esophageal cancer, cancers that depend on tumor-stroma interaction and are suspected to at least in part be driven by aberrant Hedgehog signaling. The research in his group ranges from cell biology, translational work including biomarker development, delineation of intra- and inter-tumor heterogeneity, to the design of clinical studies with collaborators from clinical departments. 

Jerry Edward Chipuk, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States of America

Jerry Edward Chipuk is an Associate Professor with Tenure in the Departments of Oncological Sciences and Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City; he also serves as an Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute - Designated Tisch Cancer Institute. He earned a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Case Western Reserve University, and obtained post-doctoral training with Douglas R. Green Ph.D. at the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The Chipuk laboratory studies: (1) the impact of mitochondrial composition and shape on cellular metabolism and commitment to apoptosis, (2) how cancer-promoting pathways converge on mitochondrial function to regulate malignancy and chemotherapeutic success, and (3) novel contributions of the mitochondrial network in tissue homeostasis.  

Vincenzo De Laurenzi, MD, PhD, University' "G. d'Annunzio” di Chieti-Pescara, Italy

Vincenzo De Laurenzi received his MD in 1990 from the University of Rome Tor Vergata and a PhD in Enzimology from the same University in 1994.
Besides working for many years in the laboratory of Gerry Melino in Rome he has worked at the NIH, Bethesda Maryland investigating the molecular mechanisms of skin deseases and more recently at the MRC toxicology unit in Leicester UK. Currently he is Associate Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University "G. D’Annunzio" in Chieti. His main scientific interests are: the study of the regulation and function of the p53 family of transcription factors, mainly in cancer development and the role of Histone Locus Bodies components in the regulation of cell cycle.

Eric Elderling, PhD, Amsterdam University Medical Center, The Netherlands

Eric Eldering trained as molecular biologist/biochemist at the University of Amsterdam (PhD 1992). His research group at the Department of Experimental Immunology was formed in 2002, and he became Professor of Molecular Immuno-Hematology there in 2012. Initially studying apoptosis regulation in normal and pathological immune cells, this has expanded to include wider fundamental and translational aspects in Immuno-Hematology, with focus on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL).

Philip A. Gregory, PhD, University of South Australia, Australia

Philip Gregory is Associate Professor and leader of the ‘Gene Regulation in Cancer’ laboratory at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia since 2015. He has made pioneering discoveries in the areas of microRNA function, circular RNA biogenesis and mechanisms regulating alternative splicing during cancer progression. His key interests lie in the regulation of gene expression during epithelial-mesenchymal transition, a key process governing cancer metastasis and response to therapies.

Jean-Ehrland Ricci, PhD, Université Côte d’Azur, France

Jean-Ehrland Ricci is leading the ‘Metabolic control of cell death' team at the Mediterranean Center for Medical Research (C3M), INSERM U1065 in Nice, France. He started his career studying the death receptor- and T cell receptor-induced apoptosis and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis in 2000. He then moved to San Diego, CA in the ‘La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology’ institute to work under the supervision of Dr Douglas R Green. He studied the link between metabolism (mitochondrial and glycolytic) and the regulation of caspase dependent and independent cell death. Jean-Ehrland started his lab in Nice in 2006, where his team studies the role of metabolism in cancers, cell death and immune regulation.