Stephen C. West

Stephen C. West

Stephen C. West
Born (1952-04-11) 11 April 1952
Hull, United Kingdom
Nationality United Kingdom
Institutions London Research Institute
Alma mater University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Known for Mechanisms of DNA repair
Notable awards Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2007)

Dr Stephen Craig West, FRS (born 11 April 1952 at North Ferriby, near Hull, Yorkshire) is a British biochemist and molecular biologist specializing in research on recombination and DNA repair. He is known for pioneering studies on homologous recombination, and for defining the links between recombinational repair and genome instability diseases including cancer. He currently works at the London Research Institute’s laboratories at Clare Hall in South Mimms, Hertfordshire.

Early life

Stephen West was born on 11 April 1952 in North Ferriby, Yorkshire, to Joseph Clair West, a fishbuyer, and Louise West. He was an undistinguished student from a working class background, but did well enough at his local school (Hessle High) to be able to go on to study biochemistry at Newcastle University. He graduated with a BSc in 1974 and stayed in Newcastle to carry out his PhD with Peter Emmerson.

Career

During his PhD work, he became interested in how cells recombine their DNA and use recombination for DNA repair. In 1977 he showed that ‘protein X’ was the elusive RecA protein, which is essential for recombination in bacteria. After finishing his PhD, which he completed within three years, he moved to the United States in 1978 to join the group led by Paul Howard-Flanders at Yale University in New Haven. While there, he purified and characterized RecA protein, and in doing so discovered many key aspects relating to the ways in which cells mediate DNA-DNA interactions and strand exchange. Parallel studies were carried out in the groups of Charles Radding (also at Yale) and Robert Lehman (Stanford University), providing the groundwork for our current understanding of the enzymatic mechanisms of recombination.

In 1985, West moved back to England and established his own group at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, now known as Cancer Research UK. There he continues his work on recombination and repair, discovering cellular enzymes that resolve DNA intermediates (E. coli RuvC, S. cerevisiae Yen1 and human GEN1) and making key contributions to our understanding of the cellular roles of tumour suppressor proteins such as BRCA2. West is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of EMBO, and in 2007 was awarded the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. He has been awarded several medals and prizes, notably from the Royal Society, the Biochemical Society and the Genetics Society.

Awards and recognition

External links

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