Principal Investigator

Dr. H. (Hannes) Lans, PhD

Principal Investigator

Associate Professor

Department
Molecular Genetics
Focus area
DNA repair mechanisms and disease

External Profile

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Dr. H. (Hannes) Lans, PhD

About Dr. H. (Hannes) Lans, PhD

Introduction

About Hannes Lans

Hannes Lans received his PhD from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 2005. In 2008, he received a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and an AICR grant that enabled him to develop his own research line, utilizing both C. elegans and mammalian cells to study the DNA damage response.

Currently, he is an associate professor at the Department of Molecular Genetics, Erasmus MC. His research focuses on the mechanisms and regulation of nucleotide excision repair and interstrand crosslink repair, in relation to cancer therapy and genetic disease.

For more information, email to w.lans(at)erasmusmc.nl or visit Lans Lab

Field(s) of expertise

Both nucleotide excision repair and interstrand crosslink repair are important DNA repair pathways that remove a wide variety of helix-distorting DNA lesions and DNA crosslinks from the genome. Both pathways protect healthy cells against cancer and aging, but also help cancer to overcome cancer chemotherapy. Using mammalian and C. elegans cell biological and genetic tools, our group aims to understand the mechanisms that control DNA repair activity in different cell types, including in postmitotic, differentiated cell types in vivo and in different types of cancer cells.

We specifically try to understand how DNA repair protects cancer cells against chemotherapy. Also, we study how hereditary defects in DNA repair lead to different genetic diseases, such as xeroderma pigmentosum and Cockayne syndrome.

More information can be found at our lab’s webpage: Lans Lab.

Publications

All publications of Hannes Lans on Pubmed

Publications

Selected recent publications:

Muniesa-Vargas A, Davó-Martínez C, Ribeiro-Silva C, van der Woude M, Thijssen KL, Haspels B, Häckes D, Kaynak ÜU, Kanaar R, Marteijn JA, Theil AF, Kuijten MMP, Vermeulen W, Lans H (2024) Persistent TFIIH binding to non-excised DNA damage causes cell and developmental failure Nature Communications 15:3490

Theil AF, Häckes D, Lans H (2023) TFIIH central activity in nucleotide excision repair to prevent disease DNA Repair 132:103568.

van der Woude M, Davó-Martínez C, Thijssen KL, Vermeulen W, Lans H (2023) Recovery of protein synthesis to assay DNA repair activity in transcribed genes in living cells and tissues Nucleic Acids Research 51:e93

Davó-Martínez C, Helfricht A, Ribeiro-Silva C, Raams A, Tresini M, Uruci S, van Cappellen WA, Taneja N, Demmers JAA, Pines A, Theil AF, Vermeulen W, Lans H (2023) Different SWI/SNF complexes coordinately promote R-loop- and RAD52-dependent transcription-coupled homologous recombination Nucleic Acids Research 51:9055-9074

Thijssen KL, van der Woude M, Davó-Martínez C, Dekkers DHW, Sabatella M, Demmers JAA, Vermeulen W, Lans H (2021) C. elegans TFIIH subunit GTF-2H5/TTDA is a non-essential transcription factor indispensable for DNA repair Communications Biology 4:1336

Sabatella M, Thijssen KL, Davó-Martínez C, Vermeulen W, Lans H (2021) Tissue-Specific DNA Repair Activity of ERCC-1/XPF-1 Cell Reports 34:108608

Ribeiro-Silva C, Sabatella M, Helfricht A, Marteijn JA, Theil AF, Vermeulen W, Lans H (2020) Ubiquitin and TFIIH-stimulated DDB2 dissociation drives DNA damage handover in nucleotide excision repair Nature Communications 11:4868

Lans H, Hoeijmakers JHJ, Vermeulen W, Marteijn JA (2019) The DNA damage response to transcription stress Nature Reviews Mol Cell Biol 20:766-784

Teaching activities

Hannes Lans teaches in the Nanobiology BSc program and MSc of Erasmus University and Delft University, where he is course manager and teacher of the Genetics course and course manager and teacher of the Project Development course. He also teaches in the Molecular Medicine MSc program of Erasmus MC, of which he is faculty member.