James Hicks's Biography

James Hicks, Research Professor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Dr. James Hicks is Research Professor of Cancer Genetics and Molecular Biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Dr. Hicks is best known for his work on yeast genetics and moveable DNA elements in the 1980’s and more recently for his work on genomic profiling in breast cancer. He received his PhD in 1975 from the University of Oregon, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at Cornell University where, with Dr. Gerald Fink, he co-developed DNA transformation in yeast. In 1978 he founded the yeast molecular genetics group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory along with coworkers Jeff Strathern and Amar Klar, where they worked out the molecular details of mating type switching in yeast. Dr. Hicks then spent 5 years as Director of the PPG Industries Joint Research Group at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, CA. In 1990 he became one of the founding scientists of ICOS Corporation in Seattle. Since then he has been a serial entrepreneur and investor in the internet and health sciences until returning to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2004, where he began his current work collaborating with Dr. Mike Wigler on the genomics and epigenomics of breast cancer. In this work he and colleagues are applying Next-Generation DNA sequencing strategies to identify diagnostic and prognostic markers in breast, ovarian and cervical cancer. Dr. Hicks has published over 100 articles on yeast genetics and cancer genomics.

Dr. Hicks currently serves on the Board of Directors of Barrett Business Services, Inc. (NASDAQ: BBSI) and is a co-founder and Director of privately held Virogenomics, Inc. of Portland, OR and GenDx, Inc. of Roslyn Heights, NY. He is also a scientific advisor to several early stage biotechnology companies.