Yosef Shiloh

Biosketch

Dr. Yosef Shiloh heads the Myers Laboratory for Cancer Genetics at the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry of Tel Aviv University School of Medicine. He obtained his Ph.D. in Human Genetics at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and trained further at Harvard Medical School, the University of Michigan, New York University Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Rockefeller University in New York, and was a Fogarty Fellow at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He is an elected member of The Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. He won the 2005 EMET Prize in Life Sciences, the 2011 American Association of Cancer Research G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Cancer Research, the 2011 Israel Prize in Life Sciences and the 2015 Olav Thon Prize in Natural Sciences and Medicine (Oslo, Norway). In addition to his research, he gives popular scientific lectures to the general public on the medical, social and ethical implications of the genome revolution. He is married to Prof. Shoshana Shiloh of Tel Aviv University’s School of Psychological Sciences and they have two children and two grandchildren.

Research Interests

Dr. Shiloh has dedicated most of his scientific career to understanding the rare, devastating genetic disorder, ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T). He began his work on A-T while working on his Ph.D. thesis and this quest culminated in 1995 in the identification of the responsible gene, ATM, in his lab. The lab has since been studying the functions and mode of action of the ATM gene product – the ATM protein, while continuing its quest to understand A-T. ATM is a homeostatic protein kinase that mobilizes the cellular responses to various stresses - primarily genotoxic stress and DNA damage. The lab studies the DNA damage response and its impact on human health with special emphasis on cerebellar function and aging.