| Citation | Professor Ian David Hickson, Professor of Molecular Oncology, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford
Professor Hickson has made a number of important discoveries in the DNA repair field. In his early career, he cloned and characterized several bacterial and human DNA repair genes, and defined in detail how the most common endogenous DNA lesion, the abasic site, is recognized and repaired. More recently, he has analyzed the relationship between genome instability and tumorigenesis, primarily using Bloom's syndrome (BS) as a model. He is recognized both as the world leader in BS research and, more generally, for his characterization of RecQ helicases such as the BS gene, BLM. Most notably, he discovered a novel, BLM-dependent pathway for resolution of homologous recombination intermediates.
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