Jop Kind wins Antoni van Leeuwenhoek prize 2016

Jop Kind receives this year’s Antoni van Leeuwenhoek prize on Monday January 11. The prize is awarded once a year to an outstanding young researcher at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, in order to promote his or her career. This year even two winners have been designated.

Golden hands

Molecular biologist dr. Jop Kind (1978) joined the Van Steensel lab as a postdoc after a highly successful PhD at the EMBL. Since October 2014 he is Junior Group Leader at the Hubrecht Institute. He made visible how 6 feet of DNA is dispersed in a cell nucleus of 10 micrometres. The location of the DNA (whether at the edge – or lamina – of the nucleus or not) is related to gene activity. Kind discovered that in cells that seem to be identical, the spatial localisation of the DNA is not the same. Only 15% of the DNA is always touching the lamina.

Kind: “I suspect that in cells that are going to be tumour cells, the DNA that is not touching the lamina and so is more active, is involved in the development of specialised body cell to tumour cell. It has been known for a long time that DNA is dispersed differently in cancer cells, now we can see the details in individual cells.”

Kind has developed two new techniques to identify the genes at the edge of the nucleus. First he gave them a ‘stamp’ by permanently adding a methyl group. Then he perfected this technique so he was able to localise the stamps in a single cell in stead of needing at least 100.000 of them. The same technique can be used for identifying other interesting spots in the DNA, for example badly repaired DNA damage that might lead to cancer.

Bas van Steensel says Kind is bubbling with ambition and original ideas. “He is exceptionally creative, thinks out-of-the-box, is willing to take risks, and pushes technologies beyond existing limits with his golden hands.”

Kind studied molecular biology at the University of Amsterdam, got his PhD at the EMBL in Heidelberg, received an EMBO long term fellowship and a NWO-veni Fellowship and published three first-authorship Cell papers.