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LMCB - Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology

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Alan Hall, director of the LMCB from 2000-2006, died suddenly in 2015 in New York City. Alan was an outstanding researcher, teacher and colleague. In the 1980s, in his early career, he was one of a small group of molecular biologists who first uncovered how genetic changes could cause cancer. Then, in truly pioneering studies, discovered mechanisms through which Rho family GTPases regulate the cytoskeleton and thus how cells control and change their shape and movement. He remained to his death one of the world’s leading cell biologists and a committed mentor to generations of young scientists.
 
Alan studied chemistry at Oxford (BA) and biochemistry at Harvard (Ph.D), before taking up molecular biology during postdoctoral training in Edinburgh and Zurich. In 1981 Alan joined a group of young PIs at the Institute of Cancer Research’s Chester Beatty Laboratories, London, as a member of a nascent Section of Cell and Molecular Biology under the guidance of the then new ICR director Robin Weiss. Together with Chris Marshall, Alan used transfection techniques to identify a novel form of Ras, N-Ras, a discovery that set them both on the trail of understanding the biology of Ras and the closely related Rho family of small GTPases. At the ICR, Alan was joined by Anne Ridley and together with Hugh Patterson, the team discovered the key roles of Rac, Rho and Cdc42 as receptor-coupled molecular switches that regulate actin assembly and cell motility.
 
In 1993, Alan left the ICR and moved to the newly formed Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology (LMCB) at University College London. The LMCB was funded by the Medical Research Council and was a joint venture between King’s College London and UCL. It was the first research institute in the UK focused specifically on molecular cell biology, and its four-year graduate programme became the prototype for the many similar programmes that followed in the UK. Alan was one of the LMCB’s first group leaders, and he played key roles in its early years.
 
Alan recruited an outstanding team of young, dynamic postdoctoral fellows and graduate students who extended the work on Rho, Rac and Cdc42 into studies of cell motility, wound healing and cell polarity. They identified many of the effectors through which these crucial GTPases control a plethora of cell functions. In 2000, Alan became the second director of the LMCB and oversaw the establishment of the MRC Cell Biology Unit at the core of the Laboratory, ensuring ongoing MRC support for the LMCB and its continuing success. Alan was an exceptional director, leading by example through the excellence of his science, his good humour and his strong moral code and mentorship skills. Alan left London in 2006 to take up the Chair of Cell Biology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, but he continued to mentor many at the LMCB.
 
Alan was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and he was a member of EMBO. He won a number of prizes, including the Feldberg Foundation Prize, the Novartis Medal, the Gairdner International Award and the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine. He was also the current Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cell Biology.