Professor Lenstra’s research aims to understand how genes are turned on and off inside living cells. Instead of taking snapshots of cells, her research group uses advanced microscopy to watch individual molecules in real time as they copy (transcribe) genes. This allows her to discover how genes are regulated in a dynamic way inside single cells, and to better understand what goes wrong in diseases such as cancer. This professorship by special appointment will open new opportunities to further integrate interdisciplinary research and teaching, and strengthen collaboration between the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Radboud University.
It’s fascinating to see the invisible world within cells become visible in our experiments. By watching individual molecules move within living cells, we can discover new biology and begin to understand how our genes really work.
About Tineke Lenstra
Prof. Dr. Tineke Lenstra (1984, Voorschoten) began her academic career at Utrecht University, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences in 2005 and her master’s degree in Cancer Genomics and Developmental Biology in 2008, both cum laude. In 2008, she began her PhD research at University Medical Center Utrecht, where she received the PhD Student Award. She obtained her doctorate degree (cum laude) with her thesis, “Genome-wide expression analysis of transcription regulatory complexes,” in 2012.
Following her PhD, Lenstra worked as postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda MD, USA. In 2016, she returned to the Netherlands and was appointed group leader at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) in Amsterdam, and in 2019, she joined Oncode Institute. Her lab uses and develops single-molecule imaging techniques in living cells to understand the regulatory mechanisms and dynamics of stochastic transcription in eukaryotic cells.
Throughout her career, Lenstra has received various special awards and grants, such as the NVBMB prize (2018), KNAW Early Career Award (2020), EMBO Young Investigator Program Award (2023), NWO Aspasia Award (2023), as well as the ERC Starting and Consolidator grants (2017-2022, 2025-2030), NWO VIDI grant (2022-2027).