Researcher

Leland Hartwell

Profile

Leland Hartwell is an American geneticist formerly at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Nurse and Tim Hunt for discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle. Hartwell's seminal contribution was the identification of CDC genes in budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) that control the cell division cycle. His genetic screen identified dozens of cell-division-cycle (CDC) genes, establishing the concept that specific molecular checkpoints monitor cell cycle progression and arrest division when DNA damage is detected. The DNA damage checkpoint concept he developed is fundamental to understanding how cells avoid dividing with damaged DNA, and how this safeguard breaks down in cancer. The checkpoint kinases (Chk1, Chk2) and their upstream regulators (ATM, ATR) that emerged from this conceptual framework are now prominent cancer drug targets. His work also pioneered the application of genetic approaches to mammalian cancer cells and the concept of synthetic lethality, now exploited in PARP inhibitor therapies.

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