Stellenbosch University
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Prof Peter Jones - Honorary Doctorate
Start: 16/03/2018, 13:00
End: 16/03/2018, 14:00
Contact:Sonja van Staden - 021 938 9098
Location: JN de Villiers Boardroom, Tygerberg Campus

​Prof Peter Jones, who will receive an Honorary Doctorate for his work in cancer research at the Stellenbosch Unviersity March 2018 Graduation Ceremony, is delivering a lecture at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences on 16 March 2018.

Prof Jones will be delivering a talk entitled:

“The Role of DNA Methylation in Health and Disease - How Stellenbosch Opened the Field of Epigenetics"

  • Venue: JN de Villiers Boardroom
  • Time: 13h00-14h00
  • Date: Friday 16 March 2018

Prof Peter Jones is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Epigenetics, Van Andel Research Institute in the USA, among other things (please see document attached).  His laboratory discovered the effects of 5-azacytidine on cytosine methylation and he first established the link between DNA methylation, gene expression and differentiation. He pioneered the field of epigenetics, particularly its role in cancer, and helped develop novel therapies for cancer.  It is a little-known fact that he served as Chief Research Officer in the laboratory of Prof Wieland Gevers at the Unit for Molecular and Cellular Cardiology of Stellenbosch University's Faculty of Medicine here at Tygerberg during the 70's.  It was also here that he made a seminal discovery (showing that an ordinary human cell which he had treated with an obscure cancer drug known as “aza-c" was beating like a heart), which would one day change the future of cancer treatment.