Richard O Hynes

Biography

Richard Hynes is the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at the Koch Institute and Department of Biology at MIT, Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Senior Associate Member of the Broad Institute.  He was formerly Associate Head and then Head of the Biology department and was Director of the MIT Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute) for 10 years.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) of London and a Member of the US National Academies of Sciences and Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the AACR Academy. Dr. Hynes did his undergraduate work in Biochemistry at Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, and his PhD in Biology at MIT on the segregation of maternal mRNAs in early sea urchin embryos.  He then returned to the UK as a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London.  By investigating the molecular changes on cell surfaces that distinguish cancer cells from normal cells, he discovered fibronectin, a cell adhesion protein present on normal cells but noticeably absent on cancer cells.

Research Interest

Oncology