Friends of IARC

"The work of IARC to identify and evaluate mutagenic DNA damaging agents is essential"

Dr Tomas Lindahl is a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (shared with Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar) for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. In the early 1980s, he left the University of Gothenburg to join the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (later Cancer Research UK), and he was the director of the organization′s Clare Hall Laboratories from 1986 to 2005. Dr Lindahl and his colleagues discovered multiple DNA excision repair enzymes, in both bacterial and mammalian cells. His findings ultimately proved critical to furthering scientists′ understanding of the role of mutagenesis in disease, particularly in cancer. 

In addition to the Nobel Prize, the work of Dr Lindahl has been recognized with many other awards, including the Royal Society′s Royal Medal in 2007 and the Copley Medal in 2010. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1988 and is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.