Bennie Lemmens
About me
Assistant Professor &
- Principal investigator at Department of Medical Biochemistry and
Biophysics / Group Leader SciLifeLabI am group leader and assistant professor at Karolisnka Institutet and have dedicated my career to understand how cells propagate and maintain genetic information. Aiming to address fundamental questions, I developed original experimental setups in several fields of molecular biology, including meiosis, DNA repair, RNA processing, DNA replication, cell division and cancer research. During my PhD, I used classical genetics and in-depth chromosome morphology assays to reveal how germ cells prevent toxic chromosome fusions at programmed DNA breaks (Lemmens et al., PLOS genetics 2012), I developed ultrasensitive PCR assays and transgenic reporter systems to reveal the existence of a single DNA secondary structure in developing animals and showed how such DNA knots fuel the formation of genomic deletions in developing organs (Lemmens et al., Nature Commun. 2015) and I devised forward genetics screens in living animals to identify fundamental principles of DNA repair pathway choice (Kamp &
- Lemmens et al. Nature Commun. 2022 and NAR 2022). For my postdoctoral studies I moved to Sweden to apply my genetics skills to human cell biology. I set up CRISPR technologies to generate unique human cell lines in which we could rapidly degrade endogenous DNA replication factors at will and combined these with high-throughput live cell imaging setups to uncover a central link between DNA replication signaling and mitotic entry (Lemmens et al., Mol. Cell 2018
- Lemmens et al. JCB 2019). As a Swedish Cancer Society fellow, I adopted additional cutting-edge single-cell imaging techniques and chemical genetics screens to study how oncogenes impair DNA replication fidelity. Today, my team develops advanced time-resolved genetics setups, 3D tissue expansion and super-resolution microscopy assays to improve our understanding of DNA replication initiation and cancer etiology.
Lemmens laboratory
↳ DNA replication↳ Cancer genetics and drug respones
↳ Time-resolved genetics
↳ Nanoscale imaging
2022-2027: ASPIRE award for Innovative Cancer Research (Mark foundation, US)
2022-2026: 100% KID grant for top-ranked junior group leaders at KI
2020-2021: Awarded start-up grant in Medicine by the Ã…ke Wiberg foundation
2020-2021: Awarded start-up grant by the Jeanssons foundation
2020-2021: Blue Sky Continuation Award for Innovative Cancer Research
2020-2021: Awarded Special KI research grant for top-ranked junior
scientists
2020-2024: KID funding to support doctoral education
2020-2024: Awarded 4-year Starting Grant by the Swedish Research Council
(VR)
2019-2020: Blue Sky Award for Innovative Cancer Research (KI-Cancer/StratCan)
2018-2019: Awared KI research grant for young scientists
2017-2020: Awared 3-year fellowship by the Swedisch Cancer foundation
2016-2017: Awared KI research grant for young scientists
2014-2016: Awarded 2-year fellowship by the Wenner-Gren foundation
Research
- My research group focuses on understanding how human cells copy their DNA and
maintain genome stability. We apply advanced genetics and imaging techniques
to control and visualize DNA replication in time and space.
Articles
- Article: JOURNAL OF MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY. 2024;67(11):8609-8629
- Article: CELL DEATH AND DIFFERENTIATION. 2023;30(7):1666-1678
- Article: NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH (NAR). 2022;50(11):6235-6250
- Article: NATURE COMMUNICATIONS. 2021;12(1):7126
- Article: MOLECULAR CELL. 2018;71(1):117-128.e3
- Article: NATURE COMMUNICATIONS. 2015;6:8909
- Article: GENETICS. 2013;195(3):1187-1191
- Article: PLOS GENETICS. 2013;9(3):e1003339
- Article: PLOS GENETICS. 2013;9(2):e1003276
- Article: CURRENT BIOLOGY. 2006;16(19):1950-1955
All other publications
- Preprint: CHEMRXIV. 2023
- Review: JOURNAL OF CELL BIOLOGY. 2019;218(12):3892-3902
- Review: CHROMOSOMA. 2011;120(1):1-21
Grants
- The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research1 November 2023 - 1 November 2027
- Swedish Research Council1 January 2020 - 31 December 2023
Employments
- Researcher, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡, 2020-
- Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡, 2021-2027