Impact
Jerry Shay is a cell biologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where he has been on the faculty since 1975 and professor of cell biology since 1993. His laboratory studies the relationships between aging and cancer through telomeres and telomerase. Telomeres shorten with each division of human somatic cells, limiting replicative lifespan, while almost all cancer cells reactivate telomerase to escape this limit. Shay's group has worked on both sides of this relationship: the lab describes the 'bench to bedside' development of telomerase inhibitors for cancer, a telomerase-dependent telomere-uncapping small molecule, and control of telomerase through alternative splicing of TERT, including in stimulated T lymphocytes. The lab also studies telomere dysfunction diseases (telomeropathies) and developed TeSLA, the Telomere Shortest Length Assay, for measuring the shortest telomeres in cells and tissues. His patents include methods for detecting cancer by assaying telomerase activity. His faculty profile lists external relationships with companies including Maia Biotechnology, Telos Biotech and LifeLength. For longevity readers he is a long-standing authority on telomere biology as a mechanism linking replicative aging, tissue regeneration and cancer.
Metrics
- h-index 170 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
Research funding
43 NIH awards · USD 11M total NIH RePORTER ↗
- Cancer Biology Training Grant National Cancer Institute · 2021 · USD 477K
- Cancer Biology Training Grant National Cancer Institute · 2020 · USD 475K
- Cancer Biology Training Grant National Cancer Institute · 2019 · USD 449K
- Translational Cancer Biology (TCB) T32 Training Program National Cancer Institute · 2024 · USD 432K
- Cancer Biology Training Grant National Cancer Institute · 2018 · USD 428K