Jonathon Pines studies mitosis, the process by which cells divide. Jon serendipitously entered the mitosis field through cloning ‘Cyclin’ with Tim Hunt. Later, as a consequence of cloning human cyclins with Tony Hunter, Jon began to focus on the spatial organization of mitotic regulators. He pioneered the use of fluorescent protein tags to analyse the dynamic behavior and stability of these regulators in living cells.  His discoveries revealed that mitotic regulators are targeted to specific substructures at specific times, and that mitosis is exquisitely coordinated by the destruction of key regulators at different times in cell division. Jon’s work has provided insights into how chromosome behavior in mitosis controls both the time and the rate at which essential mitotic regulators are destroyed, and these discoveries have wider implications for how cancers develop.

Jon is now the Head of Cancer Biology at the Institute of Cancer Research, is a Member of EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organisation, and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.