Yosef Shiloh, PhD

Dr. Yossi Shiloh is Myers Professor of Cancer Genetics and ICRF Research Professorship recipient in the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. He obtained his B.Sc. degree at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in his native Haifa, and continued his graduate studies in Human Genetics at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem for both his M.Sc. and Ph.D. He trained further at Harvard Medical School and the University of Michigan and was a Fogarty Fellow at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He is a member of The Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities and won the 2005 EMET Prize in Life Sciences, the 2011 American Association of Cancer Research G.H.A. Clowes Award for outstanding accomplishments in basic cancer research, and the 2011 Israel Prize in Life Sciences.

Dr. Shiloh has dedicated most of his scientific career to understanding the severe human genetic disorder, ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T), caused by a defect in a central mechanism that maintains the stability and integrity of the DNA molecule. He began his quest to understand this disease while working on his Ph.D. thesis. This quest culminated in 1995 in the identification of the gene mutated in A-T patients, the ATM gene, in his lab. The Shiloh lab has since been studying the function and mode of action of the ATM protein, the product of the A-T gene, and the complex signaling network that ATM activates in response to DNA damage.

In addition to his research, Dr. Shiloh devotes considerable time to giving popular scientific lectures to the general public and high school students on the medical, social and ethical implications of the genome revolution and its effect on cancer research and therapy.

He is married to Dr. Shoshana Shiloh, Professor of Psychology at Tel Aviv University. Their son, Amir is Head of the News Desk in the Israeli Internet portal “Walla!”, and their daughter, Ruth, is a graduate student in cell biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

READ MORE:

The A-T gene hunt: An interview with Yossi Shiloh on decision making, the discovery of the ATM gene and the lessons from genetics (EMBO Reports, August 19, 2019)